Steal a Pencil for Me.

"It's a scenario that sounds like the romantic tragicomedy Woody Allen never wrote (but might have): Unhappily married, impoverished Dutch Jewish accountant Jack Polak meets young, wealthy beauty Ina Soep at a birthday party and is instantly smitten," writes Kevin Crust in the Los Angeles Times. "Unfortunately, it's 1943 and Holland is occupied by the Nazis. Within months, Jack, Ina and Jack's wife, Manja, are all picked up and find themselves in the same concentration camp. But this is no piece of fiction. Director Michèle Ohayon's striking documentary Steal a Pencil for Me tells this most unusual love story with grace and compassion. Through the Westerbork and Bergen-Belsen camps, Jack and Ina's relationship - kept alive primarily through letters - survives against all odds."

"What makes Ms Ohayon's movie special is its recognition that epic horrors don't erase private dramas," writes Matt Zoller Seitz. "Graphic atrocity footage and revealing anecdotes about the Dutch Jewish experience in World War II coexist organically with the film's central love triangle."

"Steal a Pencil combines readings of the surviving letters (voiced with touching sensitivity by actors Jeroen Krabbe and Ellen Ten Damme), period footage and interviews with Jaap (now a spry 93) and Ina (who knows, but she looks fantastic) to bring to bear the most moving story about infidelity you may ever hear," writes Michelle Orange at the Reeler. "Compared to the lurid, tabloid-esque elements of Crazy Love, this year's other oldie 'true love' saga, which finds elderly Burt Pagach and Linda Riss reminiscing about that time he disfigured her all those years ago, scenes of Jaap and Ina revisiting the grounds where they fell in love and stole smooches behind his wife's back at ye olde concentration camp are positively heartwarming."

"The filmmaking isn't in the same league as a vastly complicated exploration of despair like Claude Lanzmann's Shoah, but their shared setting is misleading.," writes Eric Kohn in the New York Press. "Less dreary and poetic, Steal a Pencil for Me has an uplifting, personalized thrust."

"The film can't help but be moving, but not as cinema," claims the AV Club.

For Rob Humanick, writing at Slant this is "a misguided documentary that mistakes cutesy, polished aesthetics for meaningful sentiment."

Posted by dwhudson at November 9, 2007 8:01 AM