Yentl (1983)

(Criterion Streaming, January 2020) So, Barbra Streisand dressing up as a boy is… curiously sexy? I didn’t have that on my list of expectations in tackling Yentl. [August 2020: Oh, and now there’s Seth Rogen making the same joke in An American Pickle…] It’s a surprising film in many ways—as the story of a Jewish girl who crossdresses in order to gain an education reserved for men in 1904 Poland, you would be right to expect a fairly maudlin tale with little entertainment to it. But the result, co-written and directed by Streisand herself, is a lot more than the pat drama you could expect—it’s got humour, intensity, musical numbers (although not that memorable), a pivotal revelation scene, a young Mandy Patinkin and what feels like an education in Jewish culture. Plus, Streisand is looking far too attractive with short hair, although I’ll note that since Streisand remained a significant screen beauty from the mid-1960s to well into the 1990s, it’s not that unexpected of a turn here. No, the real surprise is that Yentl is surprisingly watchable—far lighter on its feel than you’d expect for a labour of love fifteen years in the making, and yet dense with thematic material. I don’t exactly love it, but I found it far more interesting than I expected.