Off-White Lies

Poised unwaveringly between gentle comedy and delicate drama, Maya Kenig's Off White Lies keeps a lot to itself. But this narrative withholding, while infuriating at times, presents no real barrier to our engagement with the film's unconventional look at the growing connection between a shy teenage girl and her shiftless father.

The winning performances by its two leads elevate this contrived Israeli import.

The performances are so uniformly good that it's a shame the characters are stuck with such a listless plot.

An intermittently engaging tale of father-and-daughter bonding (and non-bonding) set against the backdrop of the 2006 Israel-Lebanon War.

Director Maya Kenig's film never decides whether it wants to be a social satire, a familial drama or a parable about Israeli life during perpetual wartime; that it neither picks a route nor cohesively combines any of those strands doesn't make a fairly generic father-daughter story any more colorful.

Elya Inbar is a surprisingly commanding screen presence, but she's contending with a screenplay plagued by contrivance--a battle few could win.