Saving Neta

A standard sentence of advice to short-story writers is "Throw away your first sentence." An audience could be forgiven for thinking that as he assembled the four episodes of Saving Neta, Nir Bergman decided art would be best served if he threw away the last minute of each. But abruptly though each episode might conclude, the audience is quickly caught up in the next. Only the first one starts off slowly, and I suppose Bergman can afford that because it features Rotem Abuhav, a TV star popular enough to carry leading roles in two sitcoms as well as a humorous panel show all broadcast on the same weekly schedule. Her popularity serves her well here, because she plays a snappish figure and we have to believe in her underlying humanity. The only touch that the audience rebelled at came later in the movie, when a singing duo pops up in the middle of nowhere for an interlude. The surrealism broke the mood and the audience laughed at it, not with it. The rest of the movie arouses empathy for the characters as it juxtaposes a flood of everyday practical problems against the larger problems of family and self that the characters face.