A presentation of the film Left Luggage, from 2001. 

 

Free and open to all.  You are welcome to bring a dairy or parve lunch and join us at 12:00 noon.  Beverages and dessert is provided.  The film program will begin at 12:30pm.

 

Roger Ebert gave the film 2 stars when he reviewed it in 2001. 

 

From a NYTimes review: 

The story, set in Antwerp in 1972, follows the spiritual awakening of Chaja Silberschmidt (Laura Fraser), the nonreligious 20-year-old daughter of Holocaust survivors. A hedonistic college student, Chaja lives with Gentile roommates, dates a student revolutionary and blithely proclaims that she hates Jews. She rarely visits her parents (Marianne Sagebrecht and Maximilian Schell), who are dealing with the psychic scars of their experience in opposite ways.

Chaja's mother spends her days baking cakes, weaving blankets and denying the past, while her father is obsessed with retrieving some suitcases containing family memorabilia that he buried in the ground when he fled the Nazis three decades earlier. Because Antwerp has been so physically transformed since the war, few of the old landmarks exist. Yet he doggedly traipses about the city armed with a map and shovel.

Chaja's awakening begins when she takes a job as nanny for the Kalmans, a Hasidic family that strictly follows Jewish law. Initially the free-spirited Chaja and the thunderously solemn paterfamilias (Mr. Krabbe) clash. But as she develops a friendship with Mrs. Kalman (Isabella Rossellini) and coaxes the couple's mute 4-year-old son, Simcha (Adam Monty), into speaking, she also learns to respect their way of life. Eventually these ties are deepened by a tragic accident that tests their friendship and mutual respect.

Ms. Rossellini, all pleading eyes and trembling lips, gives one of her most sensitive performances as the harried, fearful Mrs. Kalman, and Ms. Fraser is almost as fine as the free-spirited Chaja, who sheds several layers of arrogance before the story is over.