Clara Hakedosha

On the surface, Saint Clara presents itself as a clever and amusing dystopian look at modern society. The central characters inhabit a town of featureless block buildings and deserted streets. Golda Meir High seems to be completely empty except for the principal, one teacher, and one class. And the TV in all the houses are tuned to the same show, in which a wild haired woman makes cryptic prophecies of doom and destruction.

Underneath all of this, however, is a traditional folk tale of an alienated young boy who falls in love and makes his peace with society. The boy, the town, and you the viewer learn just how unimportant are things like fame, fortune, and power. And all along the way you are entertained with tales of magic and humorous anecdotes. Long ago, this is the type of tale with which a traveling minstrel would have held your fascination. Remove the post-apocalyptic stylizations and this becomes very reminiscent of the early stories of Isaac B. Singer, which I assume are themselves done in the style of traditional Yiddish folk tales.

Don't be put off by the idea of having to sit through a moral lesson; the movie is never didactic or preachy. When you finally see the lesson at the end, it just makes the characters seem that much real and the stories that much more entertaining. This is a short and not particularly ambitious movie, but it succeeds completely in those things which it does set out to accomplish.

The premise of a girl receiving magic powers and disrupting her town is cool, but the movie doesn't exactly live up to it. You want there to be more to her magic powers than predicting the answers on tests. The movie does have a nice ending though and the principal, math teacher, lawyer father, and Uncle Elvis are a blast.

Pals Eddie Tikal (Halil Elohev), skinhead wannabe Rosy (Johnny Peterson) and the boyish-looking Libby (Maya Maron) swallow some pills before entering school. Instead of going to class, however, they are summoned to the principal's office to be questioned about a strange event. It seems that the students at Haifa's Golda Meir Junior High School have turned in perfect scores on a Math test and the perplexed teacher and principal of the school are determined to hunt down and punish the cheater. The teacher asks, "Aren't you guys smart enough to make a few mistakes so we won't catch on that you're cheating?" When they find out, however, that the class did not cheat but were provided answers by a clairvoyant Russian immigrant, their authority is shaken.

Based on a novel by Pavel Kohout, a Czech writer who adapted its story from a screenplay by his wife Jelena, Ari Foman and Ori Sivan's Saint Clara is a film of surreal charm that bears comparison to Bunuel and Truffaut. While it is quirky, it is not self consciously so, and contains characters that we can recognize as real people. Contrary to typical Hollywood fare, the film shows psychic abilities such as clairvoyance to be natural attributes of the human mind, although in this case, according to a family tradition, they will last only until the young girl falls in love. The psychic is 13-year old Clara (Lucy Dubnichek), a very quiet girl with deeply expressive eyes. While she is regarded as odd by her punk classmates, they are more than happy to receive her help on their examinations and equally eager to enlist her help in planning a revolution that never quite gets off the ground.

The oddness in the film is not limited to the students. Mathematics teacher (Joseph El Dror) had a tour of duty in Vietnam where he claims that he once beat international chess champion Bobby Fischer. The principal (Yigal Naor), nattily dressed in a red suit, claims to have made love to French singing star Edith Piaf. On television, we see a weirdly dressed newswoman who constantly speaks about the impending environmental catastrophe and we learn from Rosy that the Richter scale was inspired by Marilyn Monroe. While it has its uneven moments, Saint Clara is an offbeat gem that offers with deadpan humor some intriguing insights into adolescent behavior. As Tikel becomes infatuated with Clara, the film hints at a more conventional outcome but maintains its irresistible charm and originality until the end.

I saw Saint Clara in Toronto during the Toronto Film Festival in 1997. It was at a theatre not part of the festival at the time but it felt like it could have been (perhaps it was the year before). As others have said, it had an odd, bleak, futuristic look and feel about it but was enjoyable none the less. I would love to find the DVD or tape so I could see it again. Bernie

I enjoyed this movie very much. I did not understand much of the movie. I am not sure if this is the way kids act in Israel and if that is the way the education system works or not. I saw the movie on TV with the name of "Saint Clara".

I enjoyed the movie and the love story and the interesting weird people in the movie. It made me wonder about some of the things that were said during the movie. I guess the same way people outside of the U. S. must wonder about things said and done in American movies.

Watching this I was thinking about the movie "Tin Drum" (Die Blechtrommel) and wishing there was someone watching it with me that after the movie was over could tell me what in the hell it was all about.

Maybe it is better sometimes to NOT know what the author or director was trying to say...Because I did enjoy the movie and hope to see it again on TV.