Sweet Mud

An appealing coming-of-age tale that takes on the difficult issues of mental illness and conformity.

If [director] Shaul means for his indictment to have some contemporary resonance, to hint at conformist pressures in the current Israeli state, he fails to give us any of the blocks needed to build that thesis.

This is a film from the heart, from a firsthand familiarity that yields conflicted emotions over the gap between an ideal and its realization.

The plot may sound familiar, but director/writer Dror Shaul makes it fresh with his vivid and often bitterly funny depiction of the film's setting, a kibbutz in the 1970s.