A Borrowed Identity

Talented director Eran Riklis is interested in the coexistence of cultures, not violence, but that doesn’t mean his ending fails to carry an emotional wallop. It’s a doozy, and shows us that life can be a complex whirl of dueling identities.

Films about this particular divide don’t get any kinder or gentler, but there’s a knowing sweetness to Dancing Arabs that doesn’t come off as particularly naïve or divorced from reality, at least taking some of the false hopes of the period into account.

Impressive acting (especially from Mr. Suliman and Yael Abecassis as Yonatan’s mother) enhances this thoughtful drama, directed with a sure hand by Mr. Riklis, a film veteran.

Riklis, working from an adaptation of a popular novel by the Arab-Israeli writer Sayed Kashua, is wryly perceptive of the ways each side exoticizes and demonizes the other.

Traditional coming-of-age films like A Borrowed Identity don't often come from Israel, which is one of the film's points.

The director’s observant approach to the material helps pave over the frustrations.

Riklis’ strongest film in several years, this is another well-intentioned plea for coexistence, though apart from one scene that lays bare, with welcome righteousness, the disturbing orientalism infiltrating even Israeli intellectual circles, the whole thing is rather too scrubbed and clean.