First impressions of Between the Temples

Here’s a movie I was certain I would love:

• The trailer got my attention.
• The early buzz praised two actors I have deep affection for.
• It shows no sign of having been crafted for crowd-pleasing or any last-minute revisions due to audience reactions.
• The obvious filmic reference points are all features I either cherish or greatly respect.

I mean, wouldn’t you want to see a movie that was pitched as “A blend of Harold and Maude, Punch-Drunk Love, Lars and the Real Girl, The Big Sick, and A Serious Man, served with some unnerving Shiva Baby sauce and a dusting of The Graduate”?

But alas... very little of Between the Temples worked for me. 

The setup is interesting enough: Ben (Jason Schwartzman) is a 30-something widower fractured by the sudden death of his wife, and (like Punch-drunk Love’s Barry) troubled by what appears to have been a life among overbearing women. In his grief and insecurity, he’s lost his voice. Literally: he cannot sing the required ceremonies and services at his local synagogue. He seems stuck in a state of arrested development, unable to navigate, wary of opening himself to new experiences or relationships.

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But one day, his childhood music teacher Carla (Carol Kane) appears out of the blue, and he reconnects with a formative influence from happier times — a teacher he respected, a grown woman who may have inspired something like a boy’s first crush. (I’m speculating about that, but I think the film suggests it.) And when Carla decides