Mendy: On a wandering Jew

Reviewer: Craig Phillips
Rating (out of 5): ***

What an odd bird, is Adam Vardy's Mendy. An independent film about a young Orthodox Jew who leaves the cloistered world of Williamsburg, New York, and attempts to navigate his way through the often bewildering modern city, Mendy, just as its main character, appropriately keeps one foot in the secular world and one foot in the questioning world of the Jewish faith (and all its many incarnations). If you can get past the occasionally amateurish DV look - just as the film gets better as it goes along, it looks better as it goes along, too - Mendy is a brave, original piece of work. At its center is the performance of Ivan Sandomire as Mendy - he's at once vulnerable, questioning, innocent and rebellious.

While a story of a devoutly religious person attempting to resist temptation in a secular society is well-trod territory (and on at least one occasion I thought of Gene Wilder's Frisco Kid), there's enough freshness to the approach and the characters are so real that it rarely feels tired.

Mendy befriends Bianca, the Afro-Brazilian roommate of his friend Yankel, played with great spark by Gabriela Dias, you expect some sort of tension between the two of them, but it's nicely portrayed between the two of them. While Mendy's character veers in inconsistent directions, Sandomire's empathetic performance keeps it grounded.

The film suffers from an affliction common to many small independent films, a lack of narrative drive and some second half aimlessness, that keeps it from feeling completely satisfying, though the ending is eloquently expressed. But it's such a rare glimpse into the struggles within the modern Jewish faith, depicted so respectfully and naturally it's equally hard to dismiss.

That the cast consists largely of Orthodox or former Orthodox actors make it both all the more credible and all the more remarkable.

Note: Check your DVD player to make sure subtitles are enabled, as there's quite a bit of dialogue in Hebrew (and broken English-Hebrew, which is, what, Heblish?)