[7] The comedy-drama tells of Ariel Makaroff, the grandson of Holocaust-era Polish refugees, who is currently on a complex search for his personal and cultural identity.

The episodes in the life of a Jewish family in the Once neighborhood of Buenos Aires and the other shopkeepers in a low-rent commercial gallery are depicted in the story.

Yet, the father is in touch with Sonia via telephone weekly and supports Ariel and his brother Joseph (Sergio Boris).

He's having an affair with Rita (Silvina Bosco), an older woman, pines for his former girlfriend Estella (Melina Petriella), and fantasizes of emigrating to Poland, where his family came from during World War II.

He carps at his grandmother (Rosita Londner) for immigration documents that will support his claim to Polish citizenship as he wants to become "European."

Other characters include: a large Italian family whose noisy arguments drown out the radios in their radio repair shop; a quiet Korean couple who run a feng shui boutique; Mitelman (Diego Korol) who runs a travel agency, but which is really a front for currency smuggling; and a solitary stationer named Osvaldo (Isaac Fajm).

His mother confesses to Ariel that his father left Argentina and the family because she had a brief affair with Osvaldo, the retailer next door.

The tenderness of the family drama at its center, and the deep, hard-to-articulate feelings of a son for his enigmatic father and his heroically patient mother, emerge with a charming haphazardness.

With key sections of the film related by Ariel in voice-over, it's also a style that fosters complicity and connection with a central character who otherwise might not be a personal favorite.

"[14] The Boston Globe film critic, Wesley Morris, was impressed by the comedy, and wrote, "Lost Embrace has a novelist's human touch.

It also possesses traces of early Jean-Luc Godard and his wit with characters, as well as some of Wes Anderson's random silliness.