"It Will Work Out, Salmonico" was a quickly produced sequel to the original "Salmonico," also co-written by lead actor Reuven Bar-Yotam and Eli Tavor. The sequel formulaically presents the conflict between the morally grounded and self-sacrificing but slightly buffoonish immigrant Sephardic generation and their ungrateful, materialist progeny, with a glimpse of the prototypical Ashkenazi villain in the person of Yossi Graber. The production trusts Bar-Yotam to carry the movie, and he does. A couple of years later, he would give up his place as a big frog in the small pond of Israeli cinema and metamorphose into a small frog in the USA. I use the word advisedly; as Shlomo in the "Frogger" episode of Seinfeld, he was told "You look like a frog." Everyone's entitled to make his own decisions in life, but if he'd stayed in Israel, Bar-Yotam could have made his way from this third-hand King Lear knockoff to the real King Lear, whereas Hollywood has been ignoring and wasting his abilities for the most part.
