DOUGH (***1/2)

(2015) Nat Dayan is an old Jewish baker in the UK whose generations-held family business is in trouble; his son, a big-shot lawyer, has no interest in taking over, and Nat's customers are falling off left and right - either by moving away from what's becoming a down-and-out section of town, or by being swallowed up by a big chain of food stores slowly putting Nat out of business.  When his baking assistant defects to the chain store to provide better for his family, Nat's cleaning lady - a sweet Muslim woman - suggests her son Ayyash (Jerome Holder) for the job.  For his part, Ayyash just wants to get him and his mom out of poverty and the apartment falling apart around them, so much so that he's taken to selling drugs for a punk dealer named Victor (a creepy Ian Hart) - even though he doesn't do drugs himself - and, after accidentally spilling some weed into the dough mixer one day, realizes he's got the perfect front to work for Victor.  Meanwhile, when sales at the bakery skyrocket over Ayyash's "special dough," Nat thinks he's found a baking genius.  Naturally things will come to a head fast, and even with a side romantic plot involving Nat's landlady (the wonderful Pauline Collins) that has its charms, Dough - while spotlighting the conflicts and prejudice that exist when a Muslim man goes to work in a Jewish bakery, via the fallout from Nat's friends and customers that follows - winds up a good, darkly-comedic indie with an ending that just feels a little too perfect to come off real.  (not rated)