Avi Nesher's PAST LIFE offers up a load of melodramatic, post-Holocaust schlock

The original story, said to be a true one, upon which the movie PAST LIFE is based, may indeed be truthful. But the manner in which writer/director Avi Nesher (below) has cobbled together his third-rate filmed version hits every possible melodramatic note so hard and so often that he turns this tale of post-Holocaust trauma into mostly schlock.

By the end of this sour and silly movie, I was left with a feeling I have rarely encountered: This would have been one Holocaust story better left untold.

TrustMovies was a fan of Mr. Nesher's earlier film, The Matchmaker, and he hopes to be of others down the road. But this current one is a clinker that, I suspect, only those who will accept anything Holocaust-oriented will be able to love. Nesher seems to thrive on melodrama, and there's nothing wrong with that (take a look at the work of Douglas Sirk). But running with it and letting it run away with you are two very different things.

The tale here tells of two sisters and two families who've suffered through and from the Holocaust and are continuing in this vein -- though the families' younger generation seems to understand this only cursorily.

The plot hinges on exactly what the father of those two sisters did during the Holocaust, and the movie jerks us back and forth as to his presumed guilt regarding some heinous crimes, as the sisters -- one a talented music student (Katie Holmes look-alike Joy Rieger, above), the other an aggressive journalist (Nelly Tagar, below, left) -- take it upon themselves to investigate.

The movie moves from Israel to Germany to Poland and back (some of the architecture and visuals are fun) and takes in that other troubled family -- mother, brother, and a son who happens to be a successful composer with eyes (and ears) for our musical sister -- all to little (or, depending on your tolerance level, way too much) avail.

The biggest problem with the movie is the character of the father (played with a My Cousin Rachel array of is-he-or-isn't-he? nonsense by Doron Tavory, above, left), who consistently lies (either outright or via omission), has been physically abusive to his elder daughter, and keeps trying to sweep everything under the carpet, as does mom (Evgenia Dodina, of One Week and a Day, above, right).

By the time all this is finally sorted out -- and, gosh, so easily via "forgiveness" -- things are beginning to border on the absurd, thanks to the constant melodramatic flourishes and the needlessly ratcheting up of would-be suspense (the scene of the two composers searching the archives for the diary is particularly silly). Performances all around are as good as the overwrought material allows.

Yes, to counter those "denialists," we must keep the Holocaust stories coming. But, come on: We're certainly able to do better than this. From Samuel Goldwyn Films, running 109 minutes, and in English, German, Polish and Hebrew (with English subtitles as necessary), Past Life, after opening on the cultural coasts, hits South Florida today, Friday, June 16, in Miami at the AMC Aventura 24, and in Boca Raton at the Living Room Theaters and at the Regal Shadowood.

THE MOTH DIARIES: Mary Harron's back, with a taste of girls-school melo-horror

You've heard of melodrama, right? A kind of drama-lite that can still be quite entertaining. Now, the sometimes noted filmmaker Mary Harron (on the plus side, I Shot Andy Warhol and American Psycho; on the more middling, The Notorious Bettie Page) has come up with something I'd call melo-horror. Her newest film THE MOTH DIARIES is now-and-then scary but it also, quite deliberately I suspect, fudges the horror to arrive at something, well, a lot more perverse: a stew of incipient fright, friendship, (very) late adolescence, lesbian love/schoolgirl romance, family loss and maybe budding psychosis. None of which jells but all of which maintains at least passing interest.

Ms Harron, shown at right, teases us with all of these ingredients, and she and her excellent casting department (Kerry Bardem, Paul Schnee and Rosina Bucci) have peopled her movie with a nice array of young talent, most of whom I don't recall having seen previously but who certainly make up an interesting assortment of schoolgirls worth watching and rooting for (or against). The exception -- an actress whom I have seen several times, and who always seems different, and I mean hugely different, from role to role -- is young woman named Lily Cole.

Ms Cole (above and at left) is a chameleon of sorts. Recall her, if you can, in films as diverse as her debut (St. Trinian's) or her most amazing role (in Sally Potter's Rage) to The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus and one of the worst Spanish Civil War movies ever (There Be Dragons). Yep: They're all with Ms Cole. Either she's quite the (not so) little actress, or her directors sure know how to use her properly. Ms Harron does, too.

Cole's role is that of Ernessa -- not the film's protagonist: That would be Sarah Bolger, above, as Rebecca -- the "new girl"/catalyst who comes to the school and appears to change everything. Or maybe not. Part of the oddness (and I admit it, the fun) of the film comes from the fact that things may not nearly be what they seem to our protagonist, who has suffered a major loss and may not be bouncing back from it quite as well as she thinks.

There are sub-plots aplenty -- a helpful or not teacher (Scott Speedman, above) and the various special problems of several of the students -- and even more subsidiary characters to follow, yet none of these are brought to much fruition. Instead we concentrate on Ernessa and her maybe other-worldly powers. And while Ms Cole proves a worthy vessel for our concentration, the mashup of possible horror with the pangs of adolescence and family trauma doesn't finally amount to much: too few scares and/or special effects for the horror crowd, but not enough depth and intelligence for the serious set.

The Moth Diaries (85 minutes, via IFC Films) opens this Friday, April 20 in New York City at the IFC Center. It has also been playing for the past month on VOD and will continue there, if you prefer an at-home movie experience.