Review: Heartfelt moments highlight out of sync Russian-Israeli comedy ‘Golden Voices’

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Despite many fine moments and a valuable story to tell, “Golden Voices,” directed by Evgeny Ruman, feels like a missed opportunity.

This bittersweet, heartfelt comedy about the 60ish Victor (Vladimir Friedman) and Raya (Maria Belkin), married Russian film-dubbers who move to Israel in 1990 after the collapse of the USSR, has much to impart about how immigrants must often reinvent themselves upon arrival in a new land. That includes making do with less as they reestablish their place in society, rethink their careers and reprove their worth. No small task.

For Victor and Raya, longtime stars in their homeland for dubbing such American and international films as “8 1/2,” “Spartacus” and “Kramer vs. Kramer” into Russian, there’s little need for their specialized talents in Israel. Still, they try to find gainful employment using their “golden voices” — but doing what?

This opens up a series of tense, amusing and pointed sequences as Victor and Raya circle their meager options, with the help of the want ads and several local Russian compatriots. One of the main issues is that, given the dearth of work for them as a couple, they’re forced to strike out on their own, which moves them apart professionally but, more importantly, emotionally.

For Raya, it means taking a job as a phone sex operator in a grim, industrial-type office, and using her youthful vocal stylings to satisfy the cravings of her lonely Russian male callers. The shy Raya, initially hesitant to jump into such sordid voice work, quickly (maybe too quickly?) finds her groove and impresses her shrewd but sympathetic boss, Dvora (Evelin Hagoel), with her seductive verbal abilities and skill at drawing repeat customers.

The glitch: Raya’s afraid to tell Victor what her real job is (the former Soviet Union’s sexual repressiveness remains an undercurrent here), so pretends instead that she’s selling perfume by phone. The more Raya hides, the more she blossoms at work — and the more skeptical her husband becomes.

Victor, meantime, has hooked up with an enterprising if cagey couple (Nadia Kucher, Vitali Voskoboinikov) who run an underground video store that rents Russian-dubbed versions of new films illegally shot off theater screens. Raya wants no part of this scam so Victor’s on his own as he finds himself precariously helping to shoot and dub these bootleg tapes. Suffice to say, it doesn’t end well.

Although Victor and Raya’s journeys impact each other, that they spend so much of the film apart limits the marital progress — or lack thereof — we see them make; the profundities of the situation get shortchanged.

Taking this more individualized approach was clearly a conscious decision for Ruman and his co-writer, Ziv Berkovich, whose script is inspired by their families’ real-life experiences, but narratively, it comes at a cost.

As is, the story tends to feel more episodic than organic. An extended stretch that finds Raya drawn to one of her needier phone sex clients and falling down a bit of a rabbit hole is poignant and beautifully performed but proves an overlong segue without a strong enough payoff.

In addition, except for Victor and Raya’s childlessness — a career-first choice made long ago — and an angry, late-breaking admission Raya makes about her husband, we don’t get enough sense of what their marriage was like before moving to Israel to understand its current troubled state. Victor’s insistence that Raya pose for a photo as she first deplanes in the Holy Land — and her grin-and-bear-it response — offers a nice, er, snapshot of their dynamic, but it doesn’t quite resonate.

That said, this evocative tale is worth experiencing for Belkin’s lovely, lived-in turn as a woman of a certain age trying to find her place in a world not of her making. She’s a pleasure to watch as she works wonders with her large, expressive eyes, generous mouth and blond curls. Her Raya is such a captivating character you wonder why Victor’s not as nuts about her as we are.

As for Friedman, he deftly infuses Victor with a visceral sense of sadness and longing and a love of the possibilities that movies can bring — whatever their language. His memories of past film-dubbing triumphs provide some wistfully moving beats. The supporting cast is also first-rate.