Left Luggage Movie Review

Topol, where have you been since Fiddler on the Roof? Ah, the triumphant hero returns in a small role in Left Luggage, an overly sentimental (and manipulative) film about the plight of Hasidic Jews in 1970s Antwerp. Laura Fraser (the Scottish answer to Eliza Dushku) plays a modern Jewish girl with modern sensibilities (she wears pants) who takes a nanny job with a Hasidic family in order to pay the rent. So backwards, the family's father (Jeroen Krabbé, who also directed the film) isn't even impressed when she gets their four year old to say his first word -- instead saying he should be asking the questions of the Seder instead of saying "Quack." Meanwhile, Laura's father (Maximilian Schell) is digging up Antwerp in search of his lost bags from WWII. And we are asked to sympathize with all of these cases, unsuccessfully. Based on the novel Twee Koffers Vol.