Reviews

Cinema is a pleasant fiction. God is a useful elaboration of texts and emotions. Religion is a useful fiction, a construction on absence and death. The Talmud is a bushy bunch of burning questions, to explore or not, for the Talmud is keen on democracy and freedom of speech. Contrary to formal logic, TEHILIM begins with answers, then makes way for questions, or rather the characters are living questions who touch one another sometimes, even hug when mother gives a cuddle to son. TEHILIM also turns us moviegoers into uncomfortably seated questions. TEHILIM is a short story, not a novel, which sails at full speed from illusion to allusion. TEHILIM is a beautiful tale, a silent movie of sorts, for us to make use of.

Avanim is a powerful movie. At first glance it's about a married Israeli woman (Michale) living in a Yemeni religious environment who has a furtive affair with a man and is at odds with her father-and-boss and his unlawful activities that favor the financial interests of this religious community. Her lover dies in a suicide attack (we happen to know furtively too), but tears, grief and mourning is impossible. Nonetheless she'll manage to make something of that impossibility and the brewing family crisis: leave her husband eat the shabbat jachnun on his own, take her son, and change her life (we can imagine). At second glance it's the universal tragedy of a woman who tries to liberate from male coercion and a stringent religious community that has difficulties playing by the laws governing a democratic country. Also it's an optimistic story as it shows a multi-layered suffering fueling, not depression, but a dramatic change in destiny. The tempo and sound-track make us quasi insiders of all characters: prolonged shots of religious rituals and cooking alternate with brisk and allusive scenes.