By Eric Kohn

Only Human

Dominic Harari and Teresa Pelegri

Only Human opens in close quarters as two twentysomethings profess their love in Spanish before preparing for an in-out quickie while stranded in an elevator. That cheeky stand-alone vignette hints at nascent themes involving interchangeable sentiments of love and lust, but the winding exposition has hardly commenced.  Cut to later that bustling Barcelona night, as our fornicating protagonists Leni (Marian Aguilera) and Rafi (Guillermo Toledo) arrive at Leni's family dinner, immersed in a household bustling with Yiddishisms and Israeli pride. It's Friday night, and as the Sabbath settles in, Leni gently pulls her boyfriend aside to drop a bombshell. "You didn't tell them I was Palestinian?" he gasps. Thus the apparent premise: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, by way of personalized Middle Eastern tensions. There's also a touch of Woody Allen intellectualizing, since Rafi teaches literature and seems particularly distracted by academic ruminations to underscore his slapstick klutziness. Anyone who enjoys the screen precedents will nod at these reference points, but the final framework doesn't complete its evolution until debuting writer/directors Dominic Harari and Teresa Pelegri choose to acknowledge their characters' polarizing cultural origins and the implied political debate. Surprisingly, they do so almost seamlessly, without sacrificing an admirable wit.

While Leni comes clean and attempts to mollify her appalled mother and unload to her cynical, slutty sister—joking that "he wraps me in a sheet and I throw stones at him" when asked about bedroom antics—Rafi gets stuck with kitchen duties. With a single Chaplinesque misstep, a hefty block of frozen soup soars out the window, walloping a pedestrian below who may or may not be Leni's late-for-dinner dad. Poor Rafi's eyes turn to glass as he attempts to burrow into a messy mass of professorial facial hair. Surely nobody was looking—or were they? Given the earlier inchmeal plot construction, this rollicking ride up to the breathless second act is a Hitchcockian revelation that suspense and comedy are not dichotomous—they're equatable. Only Human nimbly avoids ideological pushiness by relying on well-worn film mechanics, resulting in a provocative interrogation of contemporary Zionism and its counterpoint without being preachy. The only grave misstep is the exaggerated caricature of Leni's younger brother, a zealous redhead who obsesses over his self-imposed Orthodox observance. The last thing a film ripe with symbolism needs is a davening Napoleon Dynamite.