The Cakemaker

It starts off as a gay love story between a young German pastry chef and cafe owner Thomas and Oren, an Israeli businessman who drops by during his work-related visits to Berlin. The pair (Tim Kalkhof as the baker and Roy Miller as the visitor) strike a friendship but at the end of each trip he returns to his wife and son in Jerusalem.

When the young man finds out, after a long and worrying absence, that his lover has been killed in a car accident he decides to deal with his grief by going to Jerusalem to find out more about his relatively casual acquaintance.

He discovers the cafe owned by the man’s wife Anat (Sarah Adler) and gets into conversation and eventually lands himself a job and an apartment. Neither knows of the mutual connection yet both are trying to come to terms with his passing.

As Thomas is non-Jewish and a German, he represents an awkward presence among the Orthodox locals - but his cakes do a roaring trade. Anat begins to develop a friendly relationship with the shy and industrious young man.

As a metaphor for the way the world views changing relationships and mores the film is affecting and explores the nature of love and how it is dealt with by characters across the divides.

What is lacking is a sense of real passion in the initial period of the relationship between Thomas and Oren and, in places, a strong narrative drive. Yet the film, its cast and its themes more than survive its deficiencies.