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The Matchmaker is at heart an unexpectedly complex film about love, but also an examination of Israel in flux, a country with one foot in the past and another in the future – a weight that may never fully vacate Israeli shoulders.

It sounds like a throwback to an earlier, more traditional style of Israeli filmmaking but it instead provides a view of that country that's as satisfyingly eccentric and unexpected as anything we've seen.

This look back at late-'60s Haifa makes for strong, accessible, character-driven drama.

An old-fashioned Mediterranean coming-of-age story set in the young heart of the Levant, The Matchmaker combines the tender tone of a film like "Cinema Paradiso" with a clear-eyed, street-level vantage on Israel's summer of the Six-Day War.

How does a filmmaker tell a Holocaust story that hasn't been told before? The Matchmaker does it by weaving fable with realism, coming-of-age innocence with adult grief, and guilt with romanticism.

This is a sweet, bittersweet comedy, well-executed if perhaps a little heavy on anecdotage. You know who might have made it in the old days? I kept thinking of Woody Allen. You don't know what you want. Woody knows what you want.

The efficient approach and tendency toward broad strokes prevent the movie from taking a deep hold, and Mr. Shafir is a hesitant young actor to have at the center. But, like the title character, Mr. Nesher demonstrates a practical intelligence for making basic connections.

The film ultimately fails to treat history as anything but a string of melodramatic reference points for moody characters haplessly trying to find love.

A former stand-up comic, Miller lends a sense of puckish mischief to his tenderhearted, troubled Cupid, yet everything else about this drama - even the cultural and spirit-of-'68 historical touches - feels like Nesher is simply mashing several stock elements together and gracelessly parading them around.