Aharon (Roee Elsberg) is not like most 11-year-old boys growing up in Israel in the 1960s. When he spends his afternoons with his friends breaking into the flat of his beautiful and mysterious neighbour, Miss Blum, (as you do) he is more interested in her collection of books and the image of Picasso’s Guernica hanging on the wall, than what is inside her underwear drawer. And when the same friends move towards involvement in the burgeoning youth movement and eventual military service, Aharon decides he should follow another, artistic path, one which is at odds with his peers’ and parents’ expectations.

… a wonderful portrait of adolescence in extremis; of how a sensitive soul is stifled in an increasingly virile world.

So, as an expression of dissent and to avoid the perils of being an adult, he refuses to grow even an inch in three years, much to the shame of his mother (a superb performance by Orly Zilbershatz who injects humanity into a role that could easily have been caricatured). Based on the acclaimed, eponymous novel by David Grossman, INTIMATE GRAMMAR is a wonderful portrait of adolescence in extremis; of how a sensitive soul is stifled in an increasingly virile world. Director Nir Bergman (BROKEN WINGS) displays great sensitivity and intelligence in navigating the story, aided by some touching performances.

Elsberg wonderfully inhabits the iconoclastic Aharon, who when not dreaming of his childhood sweetheart dancing for him on a cinema screen, emulates his hero Houdini by escaping from within a closed suitcase. For those souls who once refused to grow up they now have a hero in Aharon.