Seeing this film was a kind of surrealistic experience. On a Friday night in a cinema complex in the center of Tel Aviv, me and my wife were the only two viewers. Private screening. Taking into account that our tickets were not even paid by us but won on a raffle by the Tel Aviv edition of Time Out, this film does not seem to enjoy commercial success.
It is certainly deserving more. This film is one in a row of films that started to appear from both sides of the never ending and violent conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians, dealing with one of the most cruel aspects - suicide bombings. The approach that is being taken here is to try to humanize without necessarily explaining or excusing, and combine the story with a romantic line.
The result is mixed. The film dares too little, Dror Zahavi who studied and works in Germany made a film that looks unexpectedly like conventional Israeli cinema or even more like Israeli commercial theater. His succeeds in the marginal aspects - the life of low-class Tel Aviv a few hundreds of meters from the glamorous aspects of the largest and most contradictory city in Israel. He succeeds less in the principal conflict and fails to says anything new or unexpected on this line.
Zahavi is being helped by a team of experienced actors in the secondary roles - especially Shlomo Vishinsky and Rozina Cambos (this is how her Romanian name is correctly spelled :-)) as a slightly strange, pain and loss-stricken aged couple. Shadi Fahr-Al-Din does what you would expect, while Hili Yalon gives in my opinion the best performance in the movie, as the vulnerable young woman finding strength to fight her destiny of being born in an ultra-orthodox Jewish family and build a life of her own. The problem is that good acting cannot feel for the flaws of the story, and especially of its ending. The conflict in the Middle East is tough and complex. Simple and conventional solutions do not work here. So does not work the ending of this film.
It is certainly deserving more. This film is one in a row of films that started to appear from both sides of the never ending and violent conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians, dealing with one of the most cruel aspects - suicide bombings. The approach that is being taken here is to try to humanize without necessarily explaining or excusing, and combine the story with a romantic line.
The result is mixed. The film dares too little, Dror Zahavi who studied and works in Germany made a film that looks unexpectedly like conventional Israeli cinema or even more like Israeli commercial theater. His succeeds in the marginal aspects - the life of low-class Tel Aviv a few hundreds of meters from the glamorous aspects of the largest and most contradictory city in Israel. He succeeds less in the principal conflict and fails to says anything new or unexpected on this line.
Zahavi is being helped by a team of experienced actors in the secondary roles - especially Shlomo Vishinsky and Rozina Cambos (this is how her Romanian name is correctly spelled :-)) as a slightly strange, pain and loss-stricken aged couple. Shadi Fahr-Al-Din does what you would expect, while Hili Yalon gives in my opinion the best performance in the movie, as the vulnerable young woman finding strength to fight her destiny of being born in an ultra-orthodox Jewish family and build a life of her own. The problem is that good acting cannot feel for the flaws of the story, and especially of its ending. The conflict in the Middle East is tough and complex. Simple and conventional solutions do not work here. So does not work the ending of this film.