Arts & Entertainment
Three Women
Israeli characters
are stung by urban
angst in Jellyfish.
Michael Fox
Special to the Jewish News
A
cclaimed fiction writers Etgar
Keret and Shira Geffen's marvel-
ous debut feature, Jellyfish, is an
even greater triumph than Beaufort and
The Band's Visit, the excellent Israeli films
that preceded it into American theaters
this year.
At the same time, the Tel Aviv-set film is
the least Israeli of the three, in that it could
take place in any city in the world where
daughters disappoint their mothers (and
vice versa), communication is fractured
and frustrated and grand dreams have
shrunk to simply getting through the day
without succumbing to depression.
Tinged with surrealism yet adroitly situ-
ated just this side of absurdism, Jellyfish
is both an ambitious and ethereal movie.
From the opening shot, it strikes a tone
of delicacy but not fragility that is rarely
achieved in movies.
Jellyfish simultaneously tells a trio
of unconnected stories, following three
women through seemingly ordinary yet
pivotal junctures in their lives. Empathetic
but unsentimental, pointed but never cruel,
the film manages to be simultaneously
urgent and dreamlike.
Jellyfish won the Camera d'Or at the
Cannes Film Festival last year for best first
feature.
The movie, which Geffen scripted,
begins with a waifish young woman named
Batya (Sarah Adler) numbly standing by
as her boyfriend moves out. She seems to
be in a state of shock, but we soon come to
see that she is pretty much always passive
and distracted.
Batya works as a waitress for a caterer,
and a lengthy wedding reception presents
numerous opportunities for her to be
humiliated or ignored. The bride gets treat-
ed only slightly better, abandoned on the
dance floor and then accidentally locked in
the bathroom while a dance tune drowns
out her calls for help (not that anyone
seems to miss her).
Keren (Noa Knoller) and Michael (Gera
Sandler) end up spending their honey-
moon trapped in a nightmarish hotel
barely overlooking the Mediterranean.
Imprisoned, in a sense, with each other,
they face their first test as newlyweds.
Meanwhile, a caretaker named Joy (Ma-
nenita De Latorre) moves from one elderly
client to the next, yearning to be home
with her son in the Philippines and not
bothering to learn more than a few words
of Hebrew.
The paths of the three women occasion-
A scene from Jellyfish
ally cross — Batya literally runs into Joy,
knocking the contents of her purse onto
the sidewalk —but the filmmakers don't
overdo the coincidences. It is enough that
the characters endure the same environ-
ment, one that offers neither respite from
nor a cure for their malaise.
Curiously, for all the anguish on or just
below the surface, Jellyfish is never a down-
er. Nor is it a morality play or an empower-
ment fable or a proto-feminist tragedy.
The film might be described as a post-
modern slice of cake, a clever and witty
approximation of a state of mind. Indeed,
the state of detachment, apathy and iner-
tia evoked in Jellyfish may be uniquely
Israeli — facing the sea, and turning their
backs to the country and its problems, the
characters reject reality — but it also feels
universal and of the moment.
Jellyfish is part of a long chain of mov-
ies that have plumbed the anonymity
and callousness of the big city, and the
endless opportunities for fortuitous (even
coincidental) meetings that lead to friend-
ship, love or transformation. In each of
the threads of this movie's narrative, an
unrelated person becomes a catalyst for a
character's epiphany or reinvigoration.
As befits a postmodern tale, Geffen and
Keret don't wrap everything up in a happy
ending with a bow. Jellyfish is a movie that
— like a collection of short stories — asks
to be decrypted, discussed and taken into
one's heart.
❑
Jellyfish will be shown at the Detroit Film Theatre in the Detroit Institute of
Arts 7 and 9:30 p.m. Friday, Aug. 1; 4 and 7 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 3; and 7 p.m.
Monday, Aug. 4. $6.50-$7.50. (313) 833-4005 or www.dia.org/dft.
Espionage Extraordinaire
Morton I. Teicher
Special to the Jewish News
A
uthor Daniel Silva continues to
expand his well-deserved repu-
tation as a master of espionage
and international intrigue with Moscow
Rules (G. P. Putnam's Sons; $26.95), his
eighth spy novel featuring Gabriel Allon, a
secret Mossad agent who lives in Italy as
an art restorer.
In previous novels utilizing real-world
backdrops, Silva, employing serious
research, has tackled powerful issues,
including looted art and Switzerland's
behavior during World War II, the war on
terror and America's "extraordinary rendi-
tion" program, and terrorist recruiting
among the barely integrated Muslim com-
munities of Western Europe.
Now he delves into a series of inter-
related issues that are particularly timely:
B12
July 31 • 2008
Russia's desperate determination to regain
superpower status, its lurch toward fas-
cism over the past decade and the shad-
owy world of Russian arms
dealers who sell to rogue
regimes and terrorist orga-
nizations under state protec-
tion.
Following his usual pat-
tern, Silva begins with Allon
working on the restoration
of a painting. The story
begins on an isolated estate
in Umbria, where Allon is on
his honeymoon. It is quickly
interrupted when the chief
of Special Ops for Mossad
asks Allon to meet in Rome with a Russian
magazine editor who wants to relay a mes-
sage concerning a threat to Israel and the
United States.
Allon agrees to accept the assignment
because the Israelis are seriously con-
cerned about rumors that the Russians are
selling sophisticated weapons systems to
Arabs and others.
The carefully planned
meeting between Allon and
the Russian editor ends in
disaster when the Russian is
assassinated at their clandes-
tine rendezvous. Allon is sent
to Russia to find out what the
deceased editor wanted to tell
him. He is disguised as a func-
tionary in the Israel Ministry
of Culture.
Having artfully set the
stage, Silva proceeds to tell
the exciting story of Allon's
perilous adventures in Russia — and
locales around the world. He is bound by
"Moscow Rules:' which hold that he must
assume that all phones are tapped; all
rooms are bugged; e-mails and conversa-
tions are monitored; everyone he meets is
under Russian control; he is always being
followed.
Allon discovers that a former KGB
officer, now a very rich businessman
and secret arms dealer, is plotting to sell
deadly weapons to Al Qaida. To prevent a
death-dealing act of terror, Allon has to
work fast.
This searing story will appeal to all of
Silva's many fans and, if someone is so
unfortunate as not to be familiar with his
work, it will serve as a powerful introduc-
tion. ❑
Daniel Silva will discuss and sign
copies of Moscow Rules 7 p.m.
Friday, Aug. 1, at Nicola's Books,
2513 Jackson Ave., in Ann Arbor,
(734) 662-0600; and 2 p.m.
Saturday, Aug. 2, at Borders, 34200
Woodward, in Birmingham, (248)
203-0005.