Director Sam Garbarski’s focus occasionally skews narrow, but he does evoke the anxiety of reconciling a strict faith with secular times.
50
Village Voice
Village Voice
The Rashevski Tango begins and ends with a burial, but the movie teems with cranky life, then heals all rifts with a dance that sets a seal of comically erotic approval on that undying genre, the domestic melodrama.
50
VarietyRonnie Scheib
VarietyRonnie Scheib
Picture touchingly conveys the everyday closeness of the Rashevskis, who are wont to tango their troubles away, but spiritual upheavals and tonal shifts feel artificial and strained.
In the end, though, Mr. Garbarski makes no judgments, which leaves this film feeling sweet but light: we already knew that Judaism, like most other religions, is an ever-evolving collage.
40
New York Daily NewsJoe Neumaier
New York Daily NewsJoe Neumaier
The central metaphor of dance, though, is forced, a standard-issue cliché about dancing away problems.