The San Francisco Jewish Film Festival organizer who introduced 51 Birch Street at the Castro Theatre on Saturday said, "welcome to our high class shvitz." The bubbie sitting in front of us turned around and asked, "do you know what a shvitz is?"

We wanted to tell her that if you looked up "shvitz" in Leo Rosten's The Joys of Yiddish you'd see a picture of our shvitzy Korean-asses shvitzing like crazy all over the plush seats. The heat wave turned the Castro into a regular Turkish bath.

51 Birch Street is filmmaker Doug Blocks story about his relationship with his father after the death of his mother. Three months after her passing, his father moves in with his secretary from 35 years ago. Block and his sisters are stunned. They start examining what they had assumed was a pretty successful 54-year old marriage. Their taciturn father who was a typical 1950s absent father is suddenly the model of affection, saying "I love you" and kissing his new bride for an unprecedented 9 seconds--something that horrifies Block and his sisters, who never saw him kiss their mother.

They start examining their mother's journals and looking for evidence of their father's indiscretions and make discoveries about their mother in the process.

Unfortunately the movie started late and we had to leave to chow down on barbecued brisket so we missed the end. If anyone saw this movie we'd love to hear what happened.

On the one hand, we were mad at Block's father, who may possibly have been dorking the secretary while his cute little wife was at home (what a cliche!). Then we thought of that schmaltzy book/movie, The Bridges of Madison County. What if the secretary was really his true love and he sacrificed his own happiness out of a sense of duty to the family? What if Block's father is really like Meryl Streep and his secretary Kitty is Clint Eastwood? Why begrudge him his happiness now when he waited 35 years, out of a sense of duty to his family or social propriety or whatever? Not everyone would.

We're dying to know what happened, so let us know in the comments, people!

51 Birch Street plays on August 2 at the Roda Theatre in Berekeley and again on August 5 at the Smith Rafael film Center.