Late Marriage is a searing portrait of rigid cultural traditions and the tyrannical control they can exert over matters of the heart. Tragic and funny in equal parts, the film marks a highly impressive launch to director Dover Kosashvili's feature filmmaking career.

Handsome and intelligent, Zaza is working on his doctorate in philosophy in Tel Aviv. Yasha and Lili proudly consider their son an excellent catch, so they find it disconcerting that Zaza is still not married at 31. He humours his parents as they expound on the need for him to marry a young virgin and suffers as they take him to meet one "suitable" girl after another. But he is uninterested: In brazen disregard of his parents' strict Georgian tradition, Zaza is in love with the smoulderingly beautiful Judith, a 34-year-old Moroccan divorcee. The situation is a disaster in the eyes of Zaza's family and is made all the worse by the fact that Judith has a six-year-old daughter.

The film delineates the wrenching confrontation between love and familial duty and all the ugliness and desperation that arise from dogmatic adherence to tradition. In one particularly jarring scene, Zaza's extended family storms into Judith's apartment intending to force him to denounce the woman he loves. Yet the mood is not entirely oppressive; on the contrary, Late Marriage is an energetic and lively film, the result of dynamic scripting, editing and art direction. Ebullient moments follow fast on the heels of the most ferocious, deflating scenes, while excellent performances draw us in among the divided loyalties of a family at war with itself, making us laugh even as we cringe.

Late Marriage's spirit is robust throughout; its aesthetic restrained and modern. This is a film with a lot of heart and a lot on the line, a taut and honest exploration of cultural and familial obligations that demands to be seen. - Michèle Maheux from the Toronto Film Festival Program.