Reviewed by Jane Enkin    janeenkinmusic.com

The Wedding Plan is a delicious, tender-hearted comedy. We first meet Michal (in a subtle, lovely performance by Noa Koler) when she consults a holy woman, in a room covered with photos of Sephardi tzadikim. Michal tells her she wants to get married, she wants to be respected, she wants to invite guests for Shabbat instead of always being invited, she wants a man to sing Eyshet Chayil to her on a Friday night. Things seem at first to work out – Michal finds a match. But when her engagement falls through, she's distraught. “I've been dating for ten years – that adds up to a 490-hour dates with 123 guys.”

Michal makes a radical decision: she keeps her wedding date and her booking at the wedding hall, and sets out to find a new man to marry, on a very tight deadline. Because she's a traditional Orthodox Sephardi Israeli, that means a series of shidduchim (match-making) dates, with a fun assortment of unusual characters. After all, Michal is in her early 30's, past the age to snap up less quirky men; and her own “crazy” assertiveness keeps putting people off. But Michal continues to affirm that God will see her through.

While the shidduch dates provide a lot of the comedy, the important relationships in this film are between women. Michal is close to her family and friends, and interestingly, they are not all as Orthodox as she is – secular, mildly traditional, and Orthodox women all support one another.

Writer-director Rama Burshtein beautifully shows Michal's pain, her hopes, her determination, her obsession, while opening a window on a fascinating realm of Israeli society. I was cheering for Michal the whole time, and loving this movie.