If you could spend eternity as your 24-year-old self, filled with the joyous passion of youthful love, or as your 72-year-old self, filled with the happiness of mature love and surrounded by family, which would you choose? That is the central dilemma facing Tamara, the main character of this well-acted, well-written, and very intriguing Israeli film.

I watched "All I've Got" with seven friends. We all agreed that it is a good story, thought-provoking and at times very funny. It is a small movie, shot almost entirely in the corridors and lounges of a not-so-big cruise ship. But the issues it raises are huge. One friend deemed it "a morality play about regret and choice." In the end we agreed, in the words of another, "There is no 'Rest In Peace' in this movie!"

The story moves well, unpredictably alternating between poignancy and comedy, as it explores its central theme of choices - choices made in youth, choices made in passion, choices made in maturity, choices made from the fullness of life. It plays with images and references. Is Victor, the cruise ship captain, supposed to be Charon ferrying souls across the river Styx of Greek mythology? And what about those can-can dancers? We found ourselves puzzling over bits of it for days.

"Age pines for youth. Youth pines for itself," was one verdict. Another suggested, "Maybe Victor isn't offering a binary, either-or choice. Maybe he is really offering a look at what the other option would be like if she chose it. Maybe that's why he seems to break his own rules several times." And, "He is sort of rabbinical in that way."

There are many wonderful moments in the film. Sometimes all of us laughed aloud; at other times we all sighed, feeling the "if only" or "what if" moments that we all harbor inside. In truth, the character I most identified with was Uri, Tamara's young boyfriend. In his youthful passion, he decides to spend 50 years working on the ship, waiting for her so that they can go to the afterlife together, and banking on her choosing to go with him. At 29 I gave up a career path with the Forest Service to spend a few years essentially as a nomad. I have always wondered what might have happened if I had chosen the certainty of a job over my youthful desire to travel. But that's another movie.

Kali Lightfoot is Director of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Southern Maine. She loves movies and books and talking about both.

2004 MJFF Program Book edited by Abby Zimet