Clifton Johnson An odd exploration of art and artist, The Kindergarten Teacher's most notable contribution may be its camerawork...which is almost a character in and of itself. The plot lags, the characters perplex, but the questions persist. It is not a flawless film, but it sure is interesting. And hard not to watch.

aphrodisiaciix The plot is plain, the acting is shallow, the editing is choppy and abrupt, the camera angles are just either too low or too high, too close or too far (very annoying and ineffective).Two very unnecessary full frontal male nude scenes which the story still can be told without them. In the second nude scene, she just took off her clothes like that? Was that got something to do with the recurring words "whores" and "prostitute"? And, what's the deal with that guy who threw candies at the kid? Then, the teacher went to the dance floor with him, even without his apology and with his conceited attitude? What about that really weird dance number the three of them put on? And, the ending? Why kidnapped the kid? What the #$&%? A pretentious movie which unsuccessful at trying to make something out of nothing. A weird kid and a weird teacher who are both acting weird under weird direction along with weird editing don't make an interesting movie, rather on the contrary... Just a weird movie!It's not art and definitely not entertainment.

Paul Allaer "The Kindergarten Teacher (2014 release from Israel; 120 min.) brings the story of Nira, a kindergarten teacher, and Yoav, a 5 yr. old boy in her class. As the movie opens, we see Nira talking to her husband about the remarkable gift the boy has, spewing poetry at any given time. The boy's nanny confides that she is using the boy's poets at her auditions. Meanwhile, Nira and the boy grow ever closer. To tell you more would spoil your viewing experience, you'll just have to see for yourself how it all plays out.Couple of comments: this is the second movie from up-and-coming writer-director Nadav Lepid, who previously brought us "Policeman". In the DVD extras, he discloses in an interview that the story is mostly auto-biographical, to my surprise. Turns out that Lepid as a young boy went around proclaiming poetry out of nowhere. As to the relationship between Nira and the boy, once it becomes clear how protective she feels about the boy, the only question that remains is how far she will take it... The two main characters are portrayed beautifully by Sarit Larry as Nira, and even more impressive is Avi Schnaidman as the young boy. In the director's interview in the DVD bonus materials, he explains how they went about casting for the role of the young boy.I don't think this movie ever saw a US theatrical release 9and if it did, it never came to Cincinnati), which is a darn shame. I picked this up while browsing the foreign movie section at my local library. I continue to be impressed with the quality of movies coming out of Israel. For such a small country, they sure do have some great movies. If you are in the mood for a high-quality "all talk, no action" movie, you cannot go wrong with "The Kindergarten Teacher".

The_late_Buddy_Ryan Although we felt it didn't quite succeed, even on its own terms IMHO, "The Kindergarten Teacher" is still very watchable. The dour social criticism—poetry no longer has a place in the state of Israel!—didn't really speak to us, though the satirical portraits of the PC haters in Nira's poetry class and the weirdos at the poetry slam were quite amusing, in a depressing way. The main storyline, Nira's relationship with the chubby-cheeked prodigy, Yoav, gets your attention right away and really builds; our main complaint was that Yoav's character seems inconsistent—he's withdrawn and suspicious at first (and rightly so!), then suddenly turns trusting and confiding, without any real transition. (Maybe he just realizes he's found a new amanuensis to copy down his poems; we, on the other hand, were sorry to see the last of Israeli singing star Ester Rada, who plays Yoav's nanny, Miri.)Another plausibility problem, at least judging by the subtitles, is that even the best read five-year-old could never have composed the poems he recites ("banality"? really?)… The plot line got a little too cryptic for our taste as well—there's a teasing suggestion that Yoav's poems were actually written by Miri, another that he's channeling in verses recited by his uncle years before—and there are a couple of episodes meant to illustrate the, as it were, banality of Nira's life that seem like filler, but writer/director Nadav Lapid pulls it all together in the almost wordless final scene, set in a glitzy Sinai resort, that really makes it clear what Nira's nutty mission was all about.