No need to reprise the plot. It has already been told to death from a number of different points of view. It deserves a high rating for the first hour and half and a big question mark for the remainder. It is somewhat reminiscent of an Italian film fro 2001 called Le Fate Ignoranti, in which an apparently straight married man falls in love with another man and is later killed in a car accident, leaving his wife emotionally bereft. The surviving wife in this film, unlike the one in the earlier situation who immediately begins to track down her husband's boyfriend, passively allows the husband's lover into her life in a series of totally implausible events that end mysteriously in a return to the status quo ante.
I disagree with those reviewers who accept the last few scenes of this film as a potential fulfillment of an actual love affair between the wife and the boyfriend. The cathartic moment using flashbacks after the critical reveal shows instead the wife laughing almost comically following a clumsy attempt at lovemaking in the kitchen, reinforced by her likely telling her brother-in-law to kick the poor German schmuck out of the country. Her own trip to Berlin in the final scenes represent her victory lap as a spurned Israeli woman who has overcome all her self-doubts. Heavy irony informs her views of ruined parts of the city and the Siegesallee. The cakemaker is left to pedal his little bicycle back home.
The earlier Italian movie has basically the same ending with the wife victorious.
Review of The Cakemaker
