A wonderfully complex exploration into people’s attempts to control the fates and their own discovered strengths in the wake of illusory failure
Winning the prestigious Golden Camera Award as well as the Screenwriting Award at Cannes for this film, husband and wife team Etgar Keret and Shira Geffen co-write and co-direct this uncomfortable but eventually heartwarming story of alienation, affection and self-validation. Set in and around water, the film tells the story of the birth, life and death of human emotion in the context of the demands of modern society.
Etgar Keret’s short story “Kneller's Happy Campers” is the basis of screenwriter/director Goran Dukic’s 2006 sleeper underground film “Wristcutters: A Love Story.” Born in Tel Aviv in 1967, Keret has become the voice of Israeli youth through his more than forty short stories, subsequent short films and perennially best-selling books. His short film, “Skin Deep,” won the Israeli Oscar and his short story “Nimrod Flip-Out,” was published in Francis Ford Coppola’s magazine Zoetrope in the summer of 2004.
Sarah Adler plays Batia, a young woman with troubles in her personal life as well as her work life. Her parents are cranky divorcees who can’t see her beyond their quarreling. Her boyfriend leaves her and her manager at her catering job dedicates his life to insulting her nightly before finally firing her outright. Batia is pondering her life, or what is left of it, when a seemingly autistic five year old walks out of the sea and into her life. The girl is silent but Batia can communicate with her in some strange way.
The film opens with Batia executing her usual string of mistakes at Keren’s (Noa Knoller) wedding. When Keren’s toilet stall locks, seemingly on its own, she is forced to climb over the top. Falling, she injures her ankle and the planned luxurious honeymoon is off. In its place is a seedy hotel close by where her husband meets a beautiful poet with whom he may or may not have an affair. The poet’s fate is as unpredictable as the new married couple’s.
Ma-nenita De Latorre is Joy, a Filipino working to send money home to her son who she had to leave behind. Joy is caring for irascible Malka (Zaharira Harifai) who seems on the edge of death and whose only motivation is the criticism of her feckless actress daughter who is staring in a blackly comic version of Hamlet.
The little girl disappears and Batia befriends a similarly fired photographer who carries her off on her motorcycle while Keren and her uncomfortable husband see their marriage dissolving before their eyes. Joy conducts a series of long distance phone calls with her distant son, most of which are cut off in mid-sentence by unexplained and cruel technical malfunctions.
Throughout the film unplanned and imponderable winds of fate shake the plans of the characters who, try as they might, can only tread water in the sea of fate. Water flows from the ceiling and all anyone can do is move under it for a drink. But somehow, even in the worst of times, Batia, Keren and Joy survive to live their lives in ways they never imagined.
A fresh look at the power of cinema to plump the depths of the sub conscious. This is not an easy film to watch, the audience ahs to work. But the result is worth it. Beautiful photography and wonderful images of the sea in the context of human evolution.
Release: April 4, 2008
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