Avanim - Stones in English.. This film is like stones, Kidney stones! I can't spoil this film for you, the makers made a better job of it than I could ever do.
The previous reviews lead to wonder if we watched the same movie..
This is the story of Michale (Assi Levy), an incredibly dour, selfish woman who sets about ruining the lives of everyone around her, including her own.
From its opening it is almost impossible to empathise with her or he circumstances. She seems to care little for her young son Nathi (Metanel Ziv), who she is constantly late for. She is contemptuous towards her seemingly innocent husband Shmoulik (Danny Steg) and is generally unhappy for the sake of being unhappy. Whilst her life is unremarkable, even boring, it never lends itself to the level of selfish destruction she imposes on those around her. We are never treated to any insight as to why she would be so callous, just that she is having an affair with some man to whom she hardly communicates and we never get to know. As a result she is always late to collect her poor cherub of a son from kinder garden.. Oh and the lover, after we see him once, gets blown up by a terrorist.. Well for once, I think that bomber did us all a favour! I didn't care, not for him, not for her. I was more concerned about the other people that may or may not have been killed or injured, such was my lack of interest for these characters.
She works with her father (Uri Gavriel), who is for me a likable man. Her mother died apparently, but again we're not treated to any insight into this misfortune. It's just laid out before us as fact. It's hard to sum up a plot here as frankly there isn't one, we just get to follow people around like lost voyeurs.
Michale is not the heroine of this film, she is just the catalyst of events. My sympathies lay with all the poor folk that had to deal with this excuse for a Mother/Wife/Daughter..
On the plus side, and this is a cloud that requires extreme excavation, the scenes of Shabbat and the lengthy excursions into middle religious Jewish life are very interesting and manage to make this film almost watchable. I love anything to do with Israel, I could watch paint dry on a Jerusalem wall, but this film is a penance..
The one progressive character in this film gets killed by a lucky strike from a stone throwing Talmudic man, which makes it sound like a more interesting film than it is..
To summarise, I'm a non Jewish Englishman married to an Adeni Israeli, so I get the whole culture thing. Sadly, this film is just bad and my wife agrees..
The previous reviews lead to wonder if we watched the same movie..
This is the story of Michale (Assi Levy), an incredibly dour, selfish woman who sets about ruining the lives of everyone around her, including her own.
From its opening it is almost impossible to empathise with her or he circumstances. She seems to care little for her young son Nathi (Metanel Ziv), who she is constantly late for. She is contemptuous towards her seemingly innocent husband Shmoulik (Danny Steg) and is generally unhappy for the sake of being unhappy. Whilst her life is unremarkable, even boring, it never lends itself to the level of selfish destruction she imposes on those around her. We are never treated to any insight as to why she would be so callous, just that she is having an affair with some man to whom she hardly communicates and we never get to know. As a result she is always late to collect her poor cherub of a son from kinder garden.. Oh and the lover, after we see him once, gets blown up by a terrorist.. Well for once, I think that bomber did us all a favour! I didn't care, not for him, not for her. I was more concerned about the other people that may or may not have been killed or injured, such was my lack of interest for these characters.
She works with her father (Uri Gavriel), who is for me a likable man. Her mother died apparently, but again we're not treated to any insight into this misfortune. It's just laid out before us as fact. It's hard to sum up a plot here as frankly there isn't one, we just get to follow people around like lost voyeurs.
Michale is not the heroine of this film, she is just the catalyst of events. My sympathies lay with all the poor folk that had to deal with this excuse for a Mother/Wife/Daughter..
On the plus side, and this is a cloud that requires extreme excavation, the scenes of Shabbat and the lengthy excursions into middle religious Jewish life are very interesting and manage to make this film almost watchable. I love anything to do with Israel, I could watch paint dry on a Jerusalem wall, but this film is a penance..
The one progressive character in this film gets killed by a lucky strike from a stone throwing Talmudic man, which makes it sound like a more interesting film than it is..
To summarise, I'm a non Jewish Englishman married to an Adeni Israeli, so I get the whole culture thing. Sadly, this film is just bad and my wife agrees..