The Devil's Arithmetic

talisencrw 6/23/2021 3:57:50PM 8.4

Previously I had really enjoyed Donna Deitch's earlier lesbian romance period piece, 'Desert Hearts', and I had found Kirsten Dunst and Brittany Murphy amazing in 'Melancholia' and 'Sin City' respectively, but a TV-movie utilizing time-travel as a plot device for a spoiled Jewish teenager to come to grips with her heritage seemed quite a bold and intriguing cinematic experiment, not to mention being an entirely different can of worms than ever I've been privy to watching. Even though personally I have as little to do with Jewish customs as lesbian issues, like Deitch's earlier work, I was able to appreciate it, though I still prefer her earlier film, if I was held at gunpoint and had to rank the two. It's a crying shame, looking at Deitch's IMDb page, that this talented San Francisco native, now 71, has been relegated to basically doing TV episodes since this came out.