Metacritic Film

Late Marriage

Starring Lior Ashkenazi, Ronit Elkabetz, Moni Moshonov, Lili Koshashvili, Aya Steinovits Laor, Rozina Cambus, Simon Chen, and Sapir Kugman

MPAA RATING: Not Rated

Magnolia Pictures
Romance
100 minutes | Color
Israel / France
Released In Theaters May 17, 2002

Set within the Georgian émigré community of Tel Aviv, Late Marriage is a sexy and biting comedy of manners that investigates what happens when human beings get stuck between the rock of true love and the hard place of family tradition. (Magnolia Pictures)

WRITTEN BY
Dover Koshashvili

DIRECTED BY
Dover Koshashvili

Overall Metascore

This is a weighted, normalized average of all individual scores given by critics, on a scale of 0 (worst) to 100 (best).

82 / 100

Critic Reviews

100 Christian Science Monitor
The acting is superb, the filmmaking is imaginative, and the story never goes quite where you expect.
100 New York Magazine
So intimate and sensual and funny and psychologically self-revealing that it makes most of what passes for sex in the movies look like cheap hysterics.
100 Los Angeles Times
Late Marriage will assuredly rank as one of the cleverest, most deceptively amusing comedies of the year.
91 Entertainment Weekly
Watch for the director's own mother, Lili Kosashvili, a standout as Zaza's fierce, stately mama.
90 The New Yorker
The most fruitful twist in Late Marriage is that at its core lies not a snippy domestic farce but a prolonged, dirty, and wholly credible sex scene, which starts and stops and starts again, and in which argument and arousal are entwined like limbs. [27 May 2002, p.124]
90 Washington Post
A canny (and profoundly sexy) movie.
90 The New York Times
Powerful and very bitter comedy.
89 Austin Chronicle
The overall execution add up to a film of beautiful, ultimately heartbreaking honesty.
88 Chicago Tribune
One of those welcome visitors, a movie that turns out to be much more than we expected.
88 Baltimore Sun
Until the final shot, the movie keeps you wondering how it will turn out.
83 Portland Oregonian
Doesn't give off the same happy feel of the Indian arranged-marriage movie "Monsoon Wedding." Rather, it poses hard questions and leaves them unanswered.
80 Village Voice
Kosashvili's camera is restrained, the better to render Late Marriage superbly brash, raunchy, and confrontational.
80 The Onion (A.V. Club)
A daring and immediate debut feature for Koshashvili, Late Marriage could lead two likeminded people to opposite conclusions, and that may be its greatest strength.
80 Chicago Reader
Despite its farcical moments, Late Marriage leaves an aftertaste as sobering as other recent films that critique cultural conservatives in the Middle East.
80 Washington Post
Late Marriage is a closely observed, somewhat funny, ultimately very sad movie.
80 Variety
As wrenching as it is funny.
75 San Francisco Chronicle
A stunning directing debut -- is anything but sentimental about old- country customs.
75 Chicago Sun-Times
The most important sequence in Late Marriage is a refreshingly frank sex scene involving Zaza and Judith. -- Watching this scene, we realize that most sex scenes in the movies play like auditions.
75 New York Post
Kosashvili's clear-eyed approach to the cultural tradition of arranged marriage balances respect and scorn, and he reconciles the comedy and tragedy inherent in Zaza's tug-of-love with finesse.
75 New York Daily News
Whether this smart, sexy and unsparing film is a hilarious comedy or a poignant drama is a matter of personal opinion — and experience. But if you've ever felt both baffled and blessed by your own family, this "Marriage" is one event you won't want to miss.
75 Charlotte Observer
If you used this guy's umbilical cord for fishing line, you could land a world-record marlin.
70 New Times (L.A.)
A remarkable movie with an unsatisfying ending, which is just the point.
70 LA Weekly
Late Marriage, though hardly dispassionate, assiduously avoids passing judgment on any of its characters, all of whom are desperately trying to bend the world into conformity with their own narratives and superstitions.
70 TV Guide
This superbly played film, directed with remarkable skill for a first-time feature filmmaker, is truly an adult drama.
63 The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Up and down, Late Marriage is definitely rocky, but there's never a point where we lose interest and want out -- as relationships go, that's not bad.
50 Miami Herald
Late Marriage's stiffness is unlikely to demonstrate the emotional clout to sweep U.S. viewers off their feet.

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