‘Wedding in Galilee’ (NR)

"Wedding in Galilee," like many other first-time efforts, is high on enthusiasm but light on editing. Nevertheless, Palestinian Michel Khleifi's appreciative tableaux of the West Bank and love for his troubled people shine through as clear as the exquisite light among the land's olive trees.

"Galilee's" main dramatic conflict is established right away. Abu Adel (Ali el Akili), the Mukhtar (patriarch) of an occupied Palestinian village, requests of his Israeli governor that the dusk-to-dawn curfew be temporarily lifted so Adel's son can be married. At first the governor (Makram Khouri) refuses. But after a junior officer points out the political advantages of assenting, the governor agrees to the ceremony, contingent upon his being invited to the wedding. The old man, bent on the success of his son's nuptials, agrees. He must now prevail upon his villagers to view this arrangement not as invasive and divisive but as a unifying event.

A bloody faceoff between Israelis and Palestinians remains a threat (some political hotheads plot to kidnap the governor), but it seems to lose importance in Khleifi's eyes as the celebration progresses, becoming a mere narrative backdrop for characters to improvise in front of. His real interest is not the politics but the interaction between villagers and soldiers, young and old, doves and political hotheads. Khleifi, a former documentary filmmaker, employs a sit-back-and-watch technique that asks you to enjoy his characters and his culture.

Though you may leave wearied by "Galilee's" episodic, strolling pace, you'll remember the characters and vignettes you've encountered along the dusty way -- a senile grandfather who remembers his British and Turkish oppressors and sings, uninvited, in Turkish at the ceremony; the Mukhtar himself, whose rugged face is a landscape of stories; the rituals of the wedding, where bride and groom are splashed with flowers and water; Adel's siren-like daughter (Sonia Amar) who flirts openly with an Israeli soldier; and the tension when the groom (Nazih Akleh) cannot consummate the wedding (part of a rather grim practice in which guests must see proof of the bride's deflowering).

Described as the first Palestinian fiction feature (although it has French and Belgian backing), "Galilee" has an undesirably weighty role as the dramatic debut of a filmmaker and a people. But it's a more than respectable beginning.

"Wedding in Galilee" is in Arabic and Hebrew with subtitles.