MARRIAGE TOO POLITICAL IN `THE SYRIAN BRIDE'.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

`The Syrian Bride'' is a pungent little slice of absurdity from the cradle of it all, the Middle East. It's a family drama with, perhaps, the most overt political subtext in the history of cinema. Sad and funny, with a haunting finish that will rile some viewers and inspire others, this Israeli-Arab production is a small marvel of cross-cultural cooperation that's about cultures disinclined to cooperate with one another at all. And we don't just mean the Jewish state and Muslim Syria. The film is set in a Druze village in the Golan Heights, the strategic high ground Israel has occupied since the 1967 war. Though they speak Arabic, Druze are a separate, somewhat secretive religious group whose members tend to identify nationalistically with whichever country their families come from. There are many Druze members of the Israeli military, for example. But the Golan Druze, apparently, militantly consider themselves Syrians.

So much so that, even though an entire generation has now grown up on Israel's side of the demilitarized zone, few of them have accepted Israeli citizenship, technically rendering themselves stateless. This directly results in the predicament our title heroine, Mona (Clara Khoury), faces. Engaged to a distant relative who's a TV comedian in Damascus, Clara will have to cross the border in order to marry him - and after that, may never return to the home and family she's always known, unless some impossible breakthrough in international relations occurs.

As Mona's wedding looms, complications arise. Her paroled activist father Hammed (played by the actress' father, Makram J. Khoury), will theoretically be arrested if he accompanies the wedding party into the U.N.-patrolled strip of no-man's land that is the last point at which he'll ever see his daughter again. The French Red Cross worker who's responsible for ferrying visa paperwork between Israeli and Syrian border crossings is angry at Mona's playboy brother for, well, playing her. His behavior, it seems, is acceptable in Druze ethics; actually marrying someone outside of the religion is not, as another of Mona's brothers, returning for the wedding after many years abroad with his Russian wife and child in tow, discovers to his ostracized discomfort.

The most developed character in the movie is Mona's older sister, Amal, played by one of the most recognizable actresses in the Arab world, Hiam Abbass (``Satin Rouge,'' ``Munich''). She's unhappily married to a traditional local guy, longs to pursue a medical education and best relates to all of Mona's hopes and understandable misgivings.

But even Amal is surprised by how Mona responds to the inevitable bureaucratic idiocy that threatens her already bizarre nuptials at the final hour.

Directed by Israel's Eran Riklis (``Cup Final''), who co-wrote the script with a Palestinian woman, Suha Arraf, ``The Syrian Bride'' mines a rich vein of humanism while not letting any group on any side of the contested border off the moral hook. It's hard to say if it accurately reflects the Druze way of life - only one actor in the large ensemble comes from that community - but nobody appears to act in anything less than an authentic way.

Of course, the movie is also a parable that comments on wider questions of displacement, oppression and discovering where one belongs in the world. It's a lovely little film that puts a big, big bite on some very large issues.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

THE SYRIAN BRIDE - Three and one half stars

(Not rated)

Starring: Hiam Abbass, Makram J. Khoury, Clara Khoury.

Director: Eran Riklis.

Running time: 1 hr. 38 min.

Playing: Laemmle Town Center 5, Encino; Laemmle Sunset 5, West Hollywood.

In a nutshell: The marriage between a young Druze woman from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights to a Damascus-based TV actor means she'll never see her wildly diverse yet close-knit relatives again. Political metaphor made persuasively, fascinatingly personal. In subtitled Arabic, Hebrew, French and Russian, and some English.