LOVE IS A BATTLEFIELD

REVIEWED - ONLY HUMAN/SERES QUERIDOS: The directors of this harmless Spanish farce, in which a Jewish girl brings a Palestinian home to meet mother, have the nerve to end their film with the same words that closed Some Like It Hot: Nobody's perfect.

This is a terrible idea. Reminding us of Billy Wilder's film only emphasises how lacking in pace Only Human is by comparison.

The key to successful farce involves establishing sufficient narrative momentum so that your audience does not have time to brood upon contrivance or improbability. After Rafi (Guillermo Toledo), whose credentials as an academic are established by the wearing of a corduroy jacket with patches, drops a container of frozen soup on a passerby many stories beneath, there is a long period of stasis for us to ask many inconvenient questions. How come the streets are so deserted? Why isn't Rafi more upset? What kind of sociopath would suggest - as his apparently sane girlfriend does - that they should simply ignore the unconscious pensioner?

Never mind. What we have here is a cinematic version of the sort of good-natured, well-meaning play that Northern Irish community theatre groups often stage. Rather than an introverted Protestant, we have a bottled-up Palestinian. Rather than a crazy Catholic family, we have a Jewish one.

Did I say crazy? The youngest boy has become a religious fanatic. The senile grandad is prone to dragging out the rifle he once used against the British. An infant granddaughter imagines herself to be pregnant.Her mother works as a belly dancer. Oy vey!

It's very rudimentary stuff. But the attractive actors throw themselves at the comedy with such gusto and the film is so loaded with charm and optimism that it would seem mean-spirited not to overlook the many flaws. Nobody's perfect.