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A Different View of Israel

by Zoe Strimpel
Tue, 30 Oct 2007 at 1:08 PM
updated Tue, 30 Oct 2007 at 1:11 PM

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Film festival or no, it takes a special movie to fill a cinema on a Saturday at noon sharp. That film, last weekend at the London Film Festival, was "Jellyfish" (Meduzot), an unusually hyped Israeli film by the husband and wife Etgar Keret and Shira Geffen. "Jellyfish" won the Camera d'Or at Cannes for best debut this year, and those with a penchant for the odd, kitsch, and poignant in cinema were right to make the effort.

"Jellyfish" weaves together a disparate group of flailing Tel Avivis. Batya, a waitress, has just broken up with her boyfriend and is yelled by her boss for being out of it at work. Her landlord is upping the rent but won't fix the enormous leak in her ceiling. While Batya is sitting dejectedly on the beach, a 5-year-old girl suddenly emerges from the waves and walks over to her. The girl is mute but smiley and seemingly without any worldly connections. Batya takes her in, but the girl proves ephemeral and vanishes.

Meanwhile, a husband and wife meet a mysterious, tragic stranger as they pass their honeymoon in a grim hotel in Tel Aviv, and a non-Hebrew speaking Filipina tends to a cantankerous old Israeli pensioner to make money to bring home to her small son. In several places the film verges on the tragic, then farce, and pulls back. Instead of indulging in either, it focuses with a light but sure touch on the currents that bind people together and rend them apart.

Nestled in the middle of the festival, Saturday's screening made for a highly exciting prelude to the U.K. Jewish Film Festival (November 3-15). It was also notable that the only Hebrew audible came from the film — the audience that packed in for this were mostly British. When it comes to non-political Israel, Europeans generally draw a blank. With any luck the quality of films such as these will change that.

"Jellyfish": http://www.bfi.org.uk/whatson/lff/node/2405

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