The Kindergarten Teacher

Director: Nadav Lapid
Year Released: 2014
Rating: 1.5

A teacher named Nira (Sarit Larry), who has a husband and two (grown) children, becomes inexplicably - and disturbingly - fascinated by a 4-year-old student named Yoav (Avi Shnaidman) that she's convinced is a genius-tier poet: her behavior towards the child should send shivers of discomfort through anyone who works with kids for a living. There are numerous problems with this: for one, the poems by the child don't strike me as being powerful in any way (although this could be a translation issue), second, the boy is able to produce these supposedly 'exceptional' statements ("without thought, the sea is purple") just by pacing around (there's a vague side story about his 'poet uncle' that isn't thoroughly explored) and three, why would a grown woman with a supposedly sound home life become so entranced by a boy (midlife crisis? pedophilia?) - by the finale, I just figured she's mentally ill. I guess Lapid's trying to make a statement about the need for young talent to be nurtured and protected from a dangerous, mostly un-poetic world, but his movie could have used more warmth and less mechanical construction (even the few 'technical errors' - bumping the camera, breaking the fourth wall - struck me as being intentional and not 'natural').