The Cakemaker

The film opens and closes on images of Thomas’s poignant mix of solitude and passion. In the first he’s kneading his dough — that’s the activity in which he finds both his self-realization and his antidote to loneliness. At the end he rides his bike away from his Berlin bakery job. He’s going home — as usual, he thinks — alone, but still warmed by the memory of his beloved Oren and Oren's widow Anat. 

But he’s not alone. Anat has tracked him down. She glows with anticipation of their reconnecting. The last image — the clouded skies — signify their challenging but promising future. The film stops before we know if and how they will recover their love. We may guess as we prefer. Or believe. 

Thomas doesn’t lock the front door when he leaves that cafe then. Maybe it locks itself upon closing. Or his leaving it unlocked may signify his openness to Anat’s return to his love.  
       This film’s metaphors work that naturally, like Anat’s radiance at eating Thomas’s cakes and bread — that’s love at first bite. So too the sensuality of Thomas’s baking, the comforting softness in his colour, fleshiness and overall nature. Thomas is doughy himself, and he kneads to be needed. He's malleable to the touch, nourishing. Here love is not romance but an openness to emotions and to life. 

This film abounds with scenes of such quiet suggestions, revelations, nuances in relationship. In the first scene the two men are already familiar with each other — Thomas remembers what pastry Oren doesn’t like. 

Arriving in Jerusalem, Thomas’s isolation is caught in one shot where he’s shrunk to the lower right of the screen, passed by two gesticulating orthodox Jews. The framing and extras define him as alien. In the shower room at Oren’s club Thomas looks at a handsome Jew, then down at his — we infer — uncut alternative.

After stealing a smoke outside after her shabbes dinner, we see Anat boxed in the window frame luxuriating in the verboten last crumbs of his Black Forest Cake. She licks her plate. That frame evokes the religious restriction Moti imposes that she must transcend to find fulfilment with Thomas — as, too, her later discovery that her present lover was her husband’s first. 

  Wordlessly Thomas warms Anat’s runaway son, then involves him in icing the cookies. As with Anat, Thomas slips into an easy bond with the boy, despite his uncle Moti’s impediments. 

In scene after scene the import is in a glance, a gesture, hardly ever verbalized. Thomas (and we) never learn how Oren’s mother twigged to his affair with her son. We just see her immediate warmth towards him, her generosity, and her tacit knowing. 

That understanding lies beyond Anat’s brother Moti, whose initial disdain for “the German” takes cover under the formal strictures of the kosher. Moti makes an effort to accept Thomas — as in his shabbes invitation. 

In contrast, Oren’s mother and son are instinctively drawn to Thomas — as is Anat. In their first sexual engagement Anat takes the initiative. Thomas’s intention has only been to help her. The passion is unexpected.

Perhaps the key to the film’s conception of love lies in the scenes where Thomas asks Oren to describe his most recent love-making with Anat. Initially we might read the scenes as simply erotic. But the context gives them rather more depth and characterization. There is no jealousy, no bitterness. 

Rather Thomas’s embrace of Oren is so complete that it can include the other objects of Oren’s love, his wife and his son. When Thomas makes love to Anat later it is with the memory, gestures and emotion he recalls from Oren. 

Here is a film where love might conquer all. Hence all the divisions that are set up against Thomas — German vs Jew, Berlin vs Jerusalem, Hebrew vs. German/English, bereaved Insider family vs embarrassing Outsider rival, gentile vs Jew, wife vs lover, heterosexual vs homosexual love, etc. 

Thomas’s and Anat’s love for Oren make their falling in love with each other seem entirely credible — however unconventional. How many lovers do have any such strong bond in common? Oren’s mother loved him enough to accept his lover Thomas; so Anat apparently grows to, too. 
      But that acceptance too takes faith. Maybe that’s why Thomas’s cafe is called Credence.  You have to believe.

P.S. A second viewing discovers other possibilities. First, a minor one. At the end Thomas doesn't just leave the cafe door unlocked; he leaves the sidewalk table and chairs out too. He's not locking up, just leaving early, the cafe presumably in the hands of whoever managed it during his sojourn in Jerusalem. More importantly, in Oren's locker Thomas discovers a couple of condoms among the towels. This redefines Oren as someone who has been playing around. Not for him the fidelity and focus Thomas displays when he doesn't respond to the stud in the locker room or the soldier who invitingly heads into the trees. This explains why Oren's last words to Thomas were his assurance that he would never tell Anat of their affair. Yet Anat reveals Oren had just moved out, planning to move to Berlin. Oren has betrayed both his wife and this lover. The capacity for and power of love is rooted in the lover not the beloved.