An amusing pixie since birth, Carol Kane is a comic life force and as amusing in person as she is in her many off-the-wall characters — from “Taxi” to “The Princess Bride,” “The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” and beyond.

The “Hester Street” Oscar nominee was my first screen star interview, and in the flesh, she was and apparently remains a hoot. But boy, I’d hate to cross that broad.

We get a little of both Kanes in “Between the Temples,” a laugh-out-loud September-December romance that co-stars her with Jason Schwartzman.

It’s a screwy look at Jewish traditions and “flexible” mores in the sad story of a grieving, morose temple cantor (Torah singer) who “cannot sing.” Not anymore.

Finding your life spark in a much older woman, one who was your elementary school music teacher several decades before? That’s different.

Ben Gottlieb lost his celebrated novelist wife a year ago, and he’s been a wreck ever since. His congregation and his rabbi (“SNL” and “Triumph the Insult Comic Dog” star Robert Smigel) have been very understanding.

His two moms (Dolly De Leon, Caroline Aaron) take him in, try to buck him up and even sign him up for J-dating. That’s not enough to keep him from lying down in traffic, or making his first trek to a bar, where he discovers mudslides and gets into a fight because he thinks someone’s mocking him.

That’s where he’s comforted by the barfly who likes to sing karaoke in the back. It takes Ben a while to recall the music teacher who changed his life. He got “all A’s” from her, and that kept him singing into adulthood and a career.

“It was music class,” Mrs. O’Connor (Kane) grouses. “EVERYbody got A’s.”

She makes an effort to drive him home, and by going first to the house he used to share with his wife, she figures out his story. And next thing he knows, the cantor who cannot sing is visited in his bar mitvah/bat mitzvah class at Temple Sinai by an adult named O’Connor who wants her bat mitzvah.

Turns out “I was named Kessler before I was married. You can’t get much more Jewish than that.”

Ben resists, but his rabbi is all about “Jews in the pews” and donations and what not. They’ll be flexible. She’ll study with Ben. And if 13 months is too long a time to learn to sing her Torah portion,  we’ll work that out, too.

Kane and Schwartzman have an easy chemistry that never seems exactly romantic. The idea she throws out that “I taught you for four years, now you taught me” is just a cover. She’s helping him get over something, taking him back to his elementary school “belly breathing” days, giving him a sympathetic ear even as the rabbi and his pushier Filipino mom (De Leon) would LOVE to set him up with the rabbi’s “mess” of an actress-daughter, Gabby (Madeline Weinstein of “Alex Strangelove”).

“Between the Temples” is funny, from its punny title to adorable scenes such as Ben’s crisis-of-faith visit to a Catholic priest — “Jews don’t have a heaven or a hell. Just upstate New York,” where the movie is set.

The same seen-it-all bartender (Keith Poulson) ordains Ben’s favorite chocolate-flavored drink (mudslides) at the town bar, and at The Chained Duck, the best restaurant in Sefridge, New York (actually Kingston).

The rabbi’s general irreverence extends to what he uses for putting practice in his office — a Shofar. And yarmulkes are punchlines, comic props and conclusions for that rabbi to jump to as his Hepburn-imitating daughter makes the most inappropriate visit to a cemetery since Corporal Bone Spurs.

I loved the down-market world writer-director Nathan Silver creates, Jews talking with their mouths full, until one learns that burger isn’t “kosher,” which is news to a droll “friend of the tribe” local Gentile who owns the restaurant. The rabbi is “flexible” because every dollar counts and he’s supporting a failed-actress kid, a wife fond of plastic surgery and driving a late model Jeep Liberty.

Silver’s fond of close-ups, and he’s got a cast that makes the most of them.

Schwartzman is settling into middle age as a pleasant Everyschlub, and what his performance here lacks in despair he compensates with simple reactions or physical humor that he simply shrugs off at this stage of his career.

And Kane is a wonder, perhaps this summer’s surest Oscar nomination, giving us a foul-mouthed version of Ruth Gordon in “Harold & Maude,” an older woman of uncertain health just full of life, and hoping to pass that on to a student still in her thrall. Because he got all A’s in her class.

A couple of quibbles. The filmmakers insist on having Ben set up with assorted beautiful 20somethings — Weinstein, Annie Hamilton, Pauline Chalamet — all of whom seem into this Upstate New York temple cantor. Is that a catnip-to-the-ladies gig? Schwartzman is well over 40, and showing the miles. etc. I mean, a morose, sloppy shaving, low-paid temple assistant whose duties include caddying for the rabbi? He’s a catch? Come on, now.

The relationship with Mrs. O’Connor develops organically and pauses at a sort of pre-determined point. Anything that suggests a big leap into love and romance is introduced abruptly. I didn’t buy it.

But Silver’s given us a wry, wise and whimsical movie who cutting edges are somewhat removed from the lead characters, whose wit involves both leaning into Jewish stereotypes, and upending them.

And Kane, she of the querolous screech of a voice — which can be very pleasant when she uses it in song — just waltzes off with this movie, a teacher and compassionate older woman not shy about giving a student one last lesson, one that’ll stick “Between the Temples.”

Rating: R, bar punch violence, profanity, sexual situations

Cast: Jason Schwartzman, Carol Kane, Dolly De Leon, Caroline Aaron, Madeline Weinstein and Robert Smigel

Credits:Directed by Nathan Silver, scrupted by Nathan Silver and C. Mason Wells. A Sony Pictures Classics release.

Running time: 1:52