The Wedding Plan

American-born writer-director Rama Burhstein delivers this Israel-set romantic comedy, an extremely low-energy analog to Hollywood rom-coms, especially comparable in the way that it validates self-destructive narcissism as heroic. Noa Koler stars as Michal, a stubborn oddball and eager bride-to-be whose fiancée dumps her weeks before the wedding. Rather than cancel the wedding, though, Michal confidently keeps the date, insisting that God will provide a husband even as she waves away one suitor after another. It’s common for a rom-com protagonist to become obsessed with an unobtainable and even impossible idea of love, but it’s intriguing to see that obsession reflected through Michal’s faith. As an anthropological view of the Orthodox Jew dating scene (the omnipresence of religion, the men who refuse to look their dates in the eye, meet-cutes in the Temple, etc.), The Wedding Plan is intimate and occasionally fascinating, but as an entertainment it’s trite and frequently sleep-inducing. D.B.