Review of A Tale of Love and Darkness

"A Tale of Love and Darkness" is a co-production between Israel and the United States that resulted in a Hebrew-language film that had its world premiere last year (2015). It runs for 95 minutes approximately and was written and directed by Oscar-winning actress Natalie Portman and looking at her own ethical and local background where she is from, it is no surprise that the focus is clearly on Jewry and Israel. But this is only half the truth I would say. The first 40 minutes, maybe even the first half, is the most Jewish film you will see all year with the focus on food, life, traditions, politics, phrases and many other references. They even explained some stuff to the audience in a somewhat clumsy attempt of having a father explain something to his son. The second half then is much more of a family drama as it focuses for the most part on the illness of Portman's character. Yes she also plays the female protagonist in here and only looking at the second half, you could even say the central character. In the first half, it is probably the boy. Anyway, I am not sure if my criticisms with this film are more to blame on Portman or on Amos Oz the man whose memoir the film is based on. I have not read the latter, but I guess it may be a mix of both. The really dramatic moments almost all went wrong. Kids playing around and even if one of them gets accidentally slightly hurt will not result in a crisis as it is depicted in this film with the swing scene. Another example would be the scene when Israel gets approved to exist as a country by the other countries. This was such a pivotal moment, but it was just included. It was just there and there was absolutely no build-up or mention of this process earlier and this kept it from being as effective as it could have been and felt very forgettable as a consequence. other examples would be the killings of a woman and boy which felt included just for the sake of it and in a way that we would not forget that times were harsh and dangerous. And an even bigger problem are perhaps the dialogues and also the voice-overs because these sound as pretentious as the film's title and they are there on many many occasions. One of the weakest moments was probably when the boy (in the center of the story) tells the other children this parable. It's just not working and did not feel authentic coming from a boy that age. I also don't believe it is subjective opinion, it just did not feel real and this was a problem I had on several occasions. As a consequence, I did not care half as much for the characters as I hoped I would. Overall, I believe it is an okay effort for a rookie filmmaker like Portman who has never made a full feature film before, but by general standards, this was not a good watch and if she decides to make more films in the future, i hope she can improve considerably. I don't recommend watching "A Tale of Love and Darkness". Thumbs down.