I enjoyed this movie a lot more than I thought I would. It’s a sweet, low-key “love” story, with a style that reminds me a little of 90’s indie films. The main focus of the story is the relationship between men, women, marriage, and religious tradition within the Israeli Hasidic community. The film is pretty well-written, and the traditions and issues are handled skillfully, with good pacing, and were quite interesting to an outsider like me. They also use music quite effectively in the film.

But I should also point out that Fill The Void is helped enormously by the casting of leads who are way better looking than everyone else in the film – the guy is like a Hasidic approximation of Antonio Banderas and the girl looks like a young Jennifer Connelly (back when she was a slightly plump teenager doing modeling work.) For this reason, you very much enjoy watching them, and you even bond with them to some degree, despite rather minimal dialog between them. It’s also occasionally distracting, because you start to wonder what this  girl’s problem is, turning down this sexy, sensual dude who positively lays waste to every other guy in her life, including the dweeb she originally wanted to marry. For his part, he comes around a little quicker, but to me he never seems quite happy enough to be marrying a young Jennifer Connelly.

I can’t imagine this film is getting much distribution, but I do recommend it.