WHEN JEWS AND PALESTINIANS GET TOGETHER.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

Sort of an ``Abie's Irish Rose'' for our troubled modern times, ``Only Human'' puts an edgy geopolitical spin on the old meet-the-parents formula.

In this Spanish film, dorky professor Rafi (Guillermo Toledo) loves pretty Leni (Marian Aguilera) but is quite literally sweating his first visit to her family's apartment in Madrid.

And with good reason. Leni has told her Jewish folks that Rafi is the son of Israeli immigrants. True as far as it goes; she's just left out the Palestinian qualification of Rafi's heritage. And while a love like this may sound crazy to a lot of people who aren't even Arabs or Jews, as it turns out, Leni is the sanest person in her whole clan.

Matriarch Gloria (Argentinian star Norma Aleandro) is a neurotic mess who hasn't had an orgasm in some three decades of marriage. That's hardly Leni's belly-dancing sister Tania's (Maria Botto) problem; she sleeps with a different guy most nights, and her fatherless 6-year-old Paula is understandably a bit of a head case already.

As long as we're on the subject of too much or too little sex, Leni and Tania's teenage brother David's (Fernando Ramallo) sudden conversion to strict orthodoxy is blamed by all on his inability to get any. Then there's old, blind, randy grandpa, who likes to brag about how many Arabs he shot during Israel's war of independence -- and runs around the flat bearing the rifle he used.

As if this wouldn't be unnerving enough for Rafi, a darkly comic incident with a lethal block of frozen soup ups the acceptance stakes to catastrophic odds. Then there's a whole thing about whether or not Leni's mysteriously absent dad is having an affair.

Oh, and there's a duck. The duck joke is never resolved.

Anyway, Aguilera and Toledo play Leni and Rafi with many emotional shades and as a complicated but always persuasive couple. No matter what happens, the pair's love for each other is all but indestructible, yet full of believable tensions. Their only blowout fight instantly devolves into the usual Israeli and Palestinian position points on that whole insoluble mess, and I guess the movie's point is, if that can't be a barrier to true love, maybe there is cause for some hope.

Trouble is, such smart loveplay is surrounded by two-dimensional caricatures and farce mechanics that aren't always worked out thoroughly (it's not just the duck that gets lost in the bedlam). Nor is the really nutty business antic enough to get good farcical rhythms going. Toledo puts across Rafi's every doubt and worry, but he doesn't have enough nervous energy that the wackier complications ought to trigger. Conversely, we want to feel more for Leni's relatives, how their fears and disappointments and prejudices intersect. But even when those scenes occur, they cut too quickly to an easy laugh or put-down.

That said, there are many amusing moments in ``Only Human''; the film is never dull. I don't know what personal issues husband-and-wife writer-directors Teresa De Pelegri and Dominic Harari are referencing here, but they've clearly got a good bead on romantic and family politics.

Spain's horrific history of anti-Semitism is never mentioned in ``Only Human,'' and there's something great about it not needing to be. This family's got enough to worry about; how nice that that particular historical problem may have finally disappeared for good.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

ONLY HUMAN - Two and one half stars

(R: sex, nudity, language, mild violence, prejudice)

Starring: Guillermo Toledo, Marian Aguilera, Norma Aleandro, Maria Botto.

Directors: Teresa De Pelegri and Dominic Harari.

Running time: 1 hr. 25 mins.

Playing: Laemmle Town Center 5, Encino; Laemmle Playhouse 7, Pasadena; Laemmle Royal, West L.A.; Edwards South Coast 3, Santa Ana.

In a nutshell: Spanish Palestinian professor meets his Jewish girlfriend's relatives. Needed to be either a little crazier for the farce to really fly or less stereotypical for more sophisticated, character-comedy complications to take off. In Spanish with English subtitles.

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Jews and Palestinians meet in an unexpected situation -- when a man first encounters his girlfriend's family -- in ``Only Human.''