In my previous post I mentioned two recently seen Israel-Palestinian films that I didn’t like too much. For the record, I’ve seen four other Israeli or Israel-themed films over the past few months, one of which wasn’t bad, the others so-so. The not bad one was ‘Policeman’, which is like no Israeli film I’ve seen, as the socio-political cleavage depicted is not Jews vs. Arabs or secular vs. religious but extreme leftist Jews vs. the Israeli state and its ruling capitalist class. No less. Here’s Alissa Simon’s review in Variety
Two different types of tribalism come into deadly conflict in the provocative Israeli drama “Policeman.” Divided loosely into thirds, with an occasional loopy visual reminiscent of Joseph H. Lewis’ “Gun Crazy,” this fascinating but uneven pic has a conceptual rigor that doesn’t always translate into compelling viewing or even a smooth narrative whole. Nevertheless, it reps a strong debut from tyro helmer-writer Nadav Lapid, and will leave audiences debating the current social and philosophical issues it reflects. Further fest travel and niche arthouse play are in the cards for this Locarno fest competition entry.
Thirtysomething Yaron (Yiftach Klein) is part of an elite anti-terrorism police unit of the Israeli government, tacitly allowed to perform undercover assassinations of Arab enemies. Firmly believing he lives in the finest country in the world, Yaron is proud of his job, his strong, muscular physique and his status as an expectant father. Although the policeman’s family unit is depicted as tight, his bond with his squadron is tighter still. Yaron has been with most of his comrades since army service, and they thrive in each other’s company at work and play.
Lapid depicts the milieu of the policemen with an exaggerated machismo that borders on the erotic. Every time they meet, these buff hunks clasp hands or pound each other’s backs, the noise of their ultra-physical greeting dominating the soundtrack. Their attachment to their weaponry is also rendered sexual. Admiring the shape of a teen waitress, Yaron displays his gun, and asks if she wants to touch it.
About 50 minutes in, just as viewers wonder where all this is going and how far Lapid will take this imagery, the story shifts without explanation to follow another gun-worshipping tribe, a band of Jewish radicals who plot class warfare through violent means. Led by handsome blond Natanel (Michael Aloni) and pouty poetess Shira (Yaara Pelzig), these fanatical youngsters infiltrate the Jerusalem wedding of a billionaire’s daughter and take hostages of the rich and powerful in order to bring their manifesto to the national media. When Yaron’s unit is called to restore order, the policeman, who cannot comprehend a Jewish terrorist, is forced to confront a new reality.
Pic’s first (and longest) third is the most interesting, and not without humor as Yaron admires himself in the mirror while holding another man’s infant, or dances naked in front of his heavily pregnant wife. The second section plays more problematically, with less likable characters whose beliefs are as unshakable as those held by the policemen, but depicted as less rational given their privileged backgrounds and puerile reasoning.
Along the way, Lapid’s ambitious screenplay intros other types of tribes, including the aggressive punks who destroy Shira’s car, the lesbians and artists at the club Shira visits the night before their operation, and the captains of industry whose lives the government orders the police to preserve at all costs.
Thesping is highly stylized, particularly in the second section, in which the young revolutionaries share a blank-eyed stare. Evocative lensing by Shai Goldman (“The Band’s Visit”) is at its best in sun-drenched outdoor scenes, where it effortlessly captures tribal bonds and hierarchies.
Other reviews in the Hollywood and specialized press likewise gave it the thumbs up, e.g. here, here, and here. French reviews were also good. The image of Israeli Jewish Baader-Meinhof wannabes is admittedly a stretch but the film does give light to one of the many cleavages in that complex society—that there are major inequalities within Jewish society—, and that one got an inkling of during the social protest movement in Tel Aviv in the summer of 2011.
À propos of nothing, Gershom Gorenberg had a recent column on “Romneyland on the Mediterranean,” on what “having a Bain-style CEO [does] to a country… [that] Israel has run the experiment and the results are ugly.” The “CEO” is, of course, Bibi Netanyahu.
As for the other films, these so-so: One was ‘Le Fils de l’Autre’ (English title: ‘The Other Son’) by French director Lorraine Lévy. This is not an Israeli film stricto sensu, as not only is the director and most of the cast French—with Emmanuelle Devos the top bill—but the film is mainly in French as well. But it’s entirely set in Israel and framed by the conflict. The story is about an Israeli family (French aliya Jews) who are informed that their 18-year old son, who’s taken a blood test before joining the army, cannot possibly be their biological child and, upon investigation, learn that there had been a mix-up at the hospital in Haifa 18 years earlier, where their real son was accidentally switched with the newly born baby of a Palestinian family from the West Bank. So their son is, in fact, an Arab and, according to their rabbi, cannot be considered a Jew; likewise for the Palestinian family but the other way, who learn that their boy is not only not biologically theirs but is a Jew to boot. So the movie is about how the families deal with the revelation and, after hesitation and intra-family arguments, the contact they make. The film is eminently watchable and one does get caught up in it. Reviews in France were mostly good (here), as were those of Hollywood critics who saw it (e.g. here and here), and Paris audiences seemed to like it (there was scattered applause at the end at my local theater; and one of Le Monde’s former Jerusalem correspondents, whom I know personally, liked the pic). But I finally cannot give it the unreserved thumbs up, as it just had too many contrivances, and without which there would not have been a movie. E.g. it just so happened that the father/husband in the Israeli family was an IDF commander with the power to issue laissez-passers to the Palestinian family to get through the checkpoints, and it just so happened that the Palestinian family’s son (biologically of the Israeli parents) had gone to school in Paris and could therefore speak French, facilitating communication between the families. There were other such coincidences necessary for everything to fall in place. This clearly bothered me more than it did others who saw the film. It is due out in the US in late October, so film goers there will be able to decide for themselves.
Another so-so film: ‘Playoff” by Eran Riklis, who directed ‘The Syrian Bride’ and ‘Lemon Tree’, both of which made my ‘Top 20 Best Movies‘ list of the last decade. Based on these two, I’ll see anything by him. This was not his best, loin s’en faut. Entirely set in Germany (Frankfurt) and almost entirely in English, the pic is inspired by the story of an actual person, Ralph Klein, a famous Israeli basketball coach of the time who shocked the Israeli nation in 1982 by taking up an offer to coach West Germany’s lowly national basketball team, so it could have a chance at qualifying for the 1984 Olympics. Memories of WWII were still raw. Klein, called Max Stoller in the film, is played by Danny Huston—whose Israeli accent is impeccable—, who arrives in Frankfurt to skepticism on all sides, not least from some of the players, who don’t immediately take to his coaching style but also have their family histories from the Nazi era. Stoller, as it happens, has his history: born in Frankfurt in the 1930s and where he grew up into the war years—he lost his family in the Holocaust but was saved himself—, he is on a personal quest to uncover some mysteries from his past (he tells everyone in the film that he doesn’t speak German, but in fact he does). He visits his old neighborhood, now inhabited by Turkish immigrants, and befriends a Turkish woman, named Deniz, who lives in his childhood flat (and who is on her own quest, searching for her husband who vanished on her). Deniz is played by the bellissime Franco-Kurdish-Irish-Russian actress, Amira Casar, who was unknown to me (and is one of the principal points of interest in the film). There are several subplots in the film—Stoller’s personal quest, his relationship with Deniz, his coaching the team and relationship with one of its players, being an Israeli in Germany—which don’t really come together. And the basketball part of it doesn’t work at all. Reviews in France were mediocre (here), as were US and Israeli (e.g. here and here). The pic may open in the US at some point, maybe for a week after going to DVD.
The final so-so Israeli film: ‘La Femme qui aimait les hommes’, elegantly rendered in English as ‘The Slut’. It premiered at Cannes and received a few good reviews in the Paris press, so voilà, I wasn’t not going to see it. The pic is set in a moshav somewhere in Israel, where the protagonist, if one can call her that, sexually services the men in the community. Just about all of them, it seems. Here’s Alissa Simon’s review in Variety
A single mother of two young girls gives free rein to her sexual appetite in the ambitious but ultimately unsatisfying Israeli drama “The Slut,” from multihypenate Hagar Ben Asher. Strong on style and atmosphere, short on dialogue and totally lacking in character psychology, the pic seems destined to divide critical opinion between those who find it affected and schematic and those excited by its non-judgmental feminism and deliberate formal aspects. Further fest action seems assured, with Euro territories the best sales bet.
The elliptical tale unfolds in a dusty village where the eponymous Tamar (Ben Asher) seems to be the only adult woman. She dispenses sexual favors to several local men, often copulating outdoors under the hidden gaze of her giggling offspring.
When veterinarian Shay (Ishai Golan) returns to the village to settle his deceased mother’s affairs, he tries to tame Tamar into conventional domesticity, improving her house and caring for her daughters. As their affair blossoms, her former lovers glower in the background, apparently stirring within her a resistance to monogamy. Although Tamar begins to stray from their bed, Shay remains strangely content to stay in the relationship and receive the affections of her children.
Despite its title, the pic is not particularly lurid. Apart from one prolonged bedroom scene between Tamar and Shay, most of the other joyless sexual encounters are implied rather than explicitly shown.
Much like Cannes competition entry “Sleeping Beauty,” “The Slut” (whose script was developed under European mentorship) refrains from supplying audiences with an emotional hook; lissome cipher Tamar is all id. We have no idea what she thinks or why she behaves the way she does, except, perhaps, at the pic’s not unexpected but still not well-prepared conclusion.
The story’s abstraction is echoed on a visual level with Tamar likened to the wounded animals Shay so tenderly treats, and his attempts to contain her are made literal with the fence he constructs around their house. Lensing by d.p. Amit Yasour is both arty and artful as he elaborates the motif of open and closed doors and people spying primal scenes through windows.
In essaying the title character, as well as performing scripting and helming duties, Ben Asher (who starred in the Israeli skein “The Ran Quartet”) might have overextended herself. She looks fine with and without clothes, but evinces no discernible emotions. In the equally difficult role of Shay, the warm Golan comes across as a real, caring human being, so much so that he fails to convince as someone who stays in his fraught relationship for more nefarious purposes.
Along with the cinematography, the heightened naturalism of the sound design reps the standout aspect of the well-rendered craft package.
The director, Hagar Ben Asher, does indeed play “the slut” in the film and acts out in its single really explicit scene. The film is not erotic, though, and there is little dialogue, not to mention little character development or any hint of an explanation of why she is the way she is. Is she a bona fide nymphomaniac or what? And if so—or if not—, so what? Frankly, I didn’t get it. And I can’t say I was entertained. Reviews and trailers are here, here, and here. As Ben Asher has explained in interviews (e.g. here), the film has a feminist subtext. If she says so, I guess. When I told my wife about it she said that she would maybe go see it with a copine and see for herself. She didn’t.
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