“Yet this tenderly observed love story (by the director, Maxime Giroux) isn’t about religion — or its lack — but about the attraction of difference and the undeniable need to feel alive,” Jeanette Catsoulis writes in the NYT about Maxime Giroux’s movie “Felix and Meira”.

There are many weak spots in this movie, and I would say that the screenplay is to blame for the weak spots, for example the awkward and contrived first meeting between the two main characters, Felix and Meira. But despite the obvious failures I was very much touched by the movie, first of all because of the main actress Hadas Yaron. She is amazing, unattractively attractive, obedient and rebellious, full of burning desire and extremely prude.

This is not a love story; it’s a story about desire and sacrifice, about individualism and community, about flesh and spirit.

The ending of the movie reminded me very much of the ending of “The Graduate”. There are no happy endings in love, there is unfulfilled desire or ashes, but if you want to see the beauty, the pain and the heroism of unfulfilled desire, go and see “Felix and Meira.”

(Watch the trailer here.)