Only Human (Seres queridos), directed by Dominic Harari and Teresa Pelegri, is a Spanish film that is a combination of the serious Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? (1967) with the comedic Meet the Parents (2000), though more in the latter genre. Leni Dali (played by Mirián Aguilera) is a Jewish resident of Madrid who brings her fiancé, Rafi (played by Guillermo Toledo), a professor, to meet his family. Because she does not tell them in advance that he is a Palestinian, there is plenty of opportunity for comedy. Rafi, nervous about the meeting with the family, makes a few clumsy mistakes, the most notable of which is to drop soup accidentally out of an upstairs apartment window onto a pedestrian whom he begins to fear is Leni’s father Ernesto (played by Mario Martín), whose absence from the dinner also feeds speculation that he has a mistress. Although Leni’s mother Gloria (played by Norma Aleandro) is at first shocked, she accepts him when he is useful in the kitchen. Leni’s blind and deaf grandfather, Dudu (played by Max Berliner), who fought Palestinians in the early years of the Israeli state, keeps a firearm as a memento but now finds Leni as a possible target. Leni’s brother, David (played by Fernando Ramallo), seeks to learn how to live in accordance with strict Orthodox Judaism, annoying everyone. Meanwhile, Rafi is more successful in getting support from Leni’s nymphomaniac sister Tania (played by Maria Botto), though the latter’s delusionary if precocious six-year-year-old daughter Paula (played by Alba Molinero) goads Leni into antics that result in the soup mishap. At one point, Leni and Rafi quarrel and nearly end their relationship, but the family lives up to the role of a support group. What is most delightful about the film is the realization that the Spanish are able to appreciate the similarities between Jews and Palestinians even after the Madrid bombing, in which terrorists cynically used the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as fodder for their macabre mischief. MH
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