Starring Natalie Portman. In Hebrew and Yiddish, with English subtitles. Rated PG

Natalie Portman makes her writing and directing debut with a striking, and strikingly uneven, adaptation of Israeli literary lion Amos Oz’s bittersweet memoir of growing up in that troubled nation just as it was being born.

The young Amos is nicely played by Amir Tessler, although the film is narrated by his elderly counterpart. This Wonder Years: Sabra Edition features a kid with pretty messed-up parents. Portman herself plays Fania, an elegant European clearly disappointed to be living in dicey circumstances with a meek, scholarly husband (Gilad Kahana) whose love of language is the family’s only solidifying bond.

Portman, who was born in Israel, also conveys a related passion in the pointed, sometimes gruesome folk tales Fania tells her son, providing opportunities to break away from the blue-tinged, graphic-novel style of the film, shot in apt locations. (Kudos to Slawomir Idziak, the Polish-born cinematographer of Gattaca and Harry Potter movies.) The Holocaust hangs over the characters with the weight of unspoken dread, but this hasn’t dampened the lad’s curiosity about his surroundings, or his sympathetic interest in Arab neighbours—before walls and wars separated them.

Portman’s ability to convey this rich borscht of people, place, and inescapable history is flavourful indeed. So it’s unfortunate that, while getting so many difficult things right, she makes an almost equal number of missteps on the easy stuff. Shots are held too long, or repeated too often, with slow-motion effects occasionally bringing a music-video cheapness to otherwise carefully composed images.

More damaging is the second-half change of focus from Amos to her own character’s increasingly paralyzing ennui. (Oddly, it’s one of three titles released this week that feature severely depressed wives and mothers.) “My mother grew up in an ethereal culture of misted beauty,” the narrator explains, without adding further detail. Fania’s dark melancholia gradually sucks the life out of the movie, and we almost forget who’s telling the story.