The line between fantasy and reality gets very thin in this strange yet sweet Israeli charmer, which won the Caméra d’Or at Cannes last year for best first film. Directors Etgar Keret and Shira Geffen — the latter is credited with the script, though her co-director husband is also one of Israel’s most celebrated young fiction writers — are unafraid to add a little bit of magic realism to Jellyfish’s deftly arranged array of intersecting stories, all set in contemporary Tel Aviv. But even though events sometimes threaten to become too whimsical or contrived, the movie’s essential modesty and melancholy give it a genuine air of grace.

Geffen and Keret are also wise not to put too much weight on the structural device the film borrows from Magnolia, Crash and umpteen over-earnest indie dramas. As a result, the characters — an emotionally fraught crew that includes honeymooners stuck in a crummy hotel, a Filipino care worker and a mysterious young girl who emerges from the ocean — feel more like plausible people than devices themselves. A well-deployed series of visual and literary motifs creates a greater sense of coherence than such efforts usually achieve. And while Jellyfish can seem like the movie equivalent of a slim set of short stories — like Keret’s splendid 2004 collection The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God and Other Stories — its cumulative effect is surprisingly substantial.

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