The Tenth Man

The Tenth Man is a low-key charmer, an unlooked-for combination of Jane Austen and Isaac Bashevis Singer. With a twist of Buenos Aires thrown into the mix.

In his lovely new film, Argentine director Daniel Burman mixes reality with fiction in inventive ways.

Low-key in mood, Daniel Burman’s film adeptly balances character-driven drama, picaresque street humour and quasi-documentary content, depicting a milieu that will feel intriguingly unfamiliar even to viewers who think that cinema has shown them every possible angle of Jewish life.

This is the sort of quiet, well-observed comedy that is characteristic of Burman’s oeuvre, and it’s in ample supply here.

The smartest touch of Burman's bouncy, unobtrusively informative screenplay is to make Usher such a dominant offscreen presence before he finally shows up in the closing minutes.

As films about dopey dudes finding love go, The Tenth Man is too modest for its own good.

Burman's film languishes on the chaos of the events, and it can never be accused of not having some ideas about fatherhood and legacy. But the humor of this rambling film runs dry to the point of unpalatable.