Felix and Meira

Meira (Hadas Yaron) is a miserably unhappy young woman who is feeling increasingly smothered by her uber-orthodox husband Shulem (Luzer Twersky) and the closed-off Hasidic community where they reside in Montreal--other than her young daughter and the pop music that she secretly listens to as a release after Shulem leaves the house to attend morning prayers, her life is as grey and lifeless as the slushy city streets. Felix (Martin Dubreuil) is an aging hipster with no apparent attachments--emotional, spiritual or professional--to speak of who has returned to visit his estranged father on his deathbed. Although devoid of any of the encumbrances that are tying Meira down, he also finds himself similarly trapped in a spiritual prison from which escape seems impossible.

After an initial meeting in a local pizza shop, Felix encounters Meira on the street one day following his father's death and chats her up with the deathless pickup line "Can you give me advice? You are religious and I don't know what I am." Okay, it doesn't sound like much and even Meira rejects his company at first but before long, she turns up on his doorstep and a friendship begins to develop between these two people from different worlds. For her, these encounters allow her to indulge in small rebellions, ranging from trying on a pair of blue jeans to looking a man in the eye while talking to him, that do not go unnoticed by Shulem. For Felix, he also begins to come out of his shell and when it seems as though he will no longer be able to see Meira again, he goes so far as to dress up in Hasidic garb in order to infiltrate her community and get close to her.