Divan

The serious struggle in this lilting doc is told with an inviting light touch and a big heart.

Warmhearted but unsentimental, touching but not mawkish, clever but never cute, Divan is almost miraculously modest.

The picture makes up in energy and high spirits what it lacks in structure and style.

The result is a touching and humorous documentary that for all its enlightening scope, encompassing centuries of religious and cultural history and a physical voyage of thousands of miles, is ultimately a deceptively simple tale of a daughter trying to reconnect with her father across two boroughs.

At just under 80 minutes, Gluck's film would make a perfect double bill with "Trembling Before G-d," Sandi Simcha DuBowski's acclaimed documentary about gay Orthodox Jews who, like Gluck, have found themselves caught between their love for their religious heritage and all the secular possibilities they could no longer ignore.

Offers a testimonial to the devastation caused in Hungary by the Holocaust, a glimpse into the richness of Yiddish folklore, a passive-aggressive assault on the patriarchal fastness of Hasidic orthodoxy and a vast self-reflexive joke.

Too self-indulgent.