Even before he learns he has pancreatic cancer, Arye senses that change is on the horizon.
A successful and arrogant surgeon (a redundancy to some readers, no doubt), the Moscow maven has a sixth sense about the human body.
There’s also the guardian angel in street clothes and black wings that only Arye can see and hear. In movie shorthand, this is a dead giveaway that Arye’s a short-timer.
As if that’s not enough, his deceased parents — whose photographs Arye converses with, in the movie’s most pleasing touch — have warned him that he’s in for some seriously bad news.
And so, like any film character with a terminal illness who’s worth his salt, the sixty-something Arye embarks on a journey to set right the great mistake of his life.
Roman Kachanov’s “Arye,” a quirky and overly ambitious Russian-Israeli co-production, starts out as a deadpan comedy and ends up achieving the grace notes of poignant farce.
In between, though, the humor evaporates in lengthy flashbacks to the Nazi invasion of Lithuania, when the adolescent Arye hid in the attic of a non-Jewish farmer.
“Arye” screens in the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival as a co-presentation of the JCCSF Kritzer/Ross Emigre Program and the 79ers, a program of Jewish Family and Children’s Services.
A beefy, charmless fellow, Arye (Polish actor Jerzy Stuhr) trudges through life as if the world owes him a debt. Maybe it does, for he lost his family when the Nazis and local thugs wiped out the Jews of Kaunas.
He also lost Sonya, another Jew the farmer sheltered. Sonya and Arye came of age together in that dusty attic. But after the war, in a fit of pique, Arye refused to move to Palestine with her.
With his life now measured in months, Arye feels compelled to find Sonya. He does, in Israel, where “Arye” reveals itself as neither a Holocaust piece nor a glimpse of Russia aimed at homesick emigres, but as an adult tale of lust, jealousy, regret and redemption.
A compulsive womanizer with a young wife whom he treats coldly, Arye is not a particularly nice individual. Really, the only thing that allows us to warm up to him — aside from his diagnosis — is his vulnerability when he talks with his parents.
Although “Arye,” like its central character, has a romantic and generous heart beating deep beneath the surface, it suffers from too many plot contrivances and an insufficient budget to convincingly put them over.
In particular, a bizarre sequence that comes out of nowhere late in the film clumsily equates Palestinian suicide bombers with the Nazis.
More problematic, though is that “Arye” is essentially a retrograde male fantasy in which the hero is adored, admired and forgiven by every female character, regardless of the petty and piercing cruelties he’s dished out on his way through life.
Consider it a harbinger of films to come as the baby-boomer generation ages. Someday soon, feel-good films about elderly men belatedly resolving their unfinished business will take up an entire shelf at the video store.
“Arye” also manages to put a positive spin on Arye’s lust and unfaithfulness. As explicit in its own way as the epilogue to “Schindler’s List,” the film leaves Jewish viewers with unequivocal orders to go forth and procreate.
“Arye” screens 9:45 p.m. Sunday, July 24 at the Castro Theatre in S.F., 6:45 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 2 at the Mountain View Century and 2 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 3 at the Roda Theatre in Berkeley. Tickets: $8-$11. (925) 275-9490 or www.sfjff.org.