Kadosh

By RICHARD CORLISS

Best Israeli film ever! All right, that's not the highest praise; a nation with many gnarled stories to tell has produced few movie spellbinders. But Kadosh, about two women resisting the religious bondage of their ultra-Orthodox husbands, would be a fine picture from any country. If it oversimplifies complex social codes to make political points, it still works as rigorous melodrama. Actresses Yael Abecassis and Meitel Barda radiate a severe incandescence. Anxiety in a beautiful woman's face: there are worse places to begin building a vital national cinema.

--By Richard Corliss