The Burglar

Saw this at the Rotterdam film festival 2017 (website: iffr.com), where it was selected for the Hivos Tiger Award Competition. Being selected as one of the only eight nominees for this competition, gives rise to expectations. But alas, I cannot think of any reason why this movie deserved such a prestigious place.

The story contained so much illogical steps that I must conclude that I missed something important. Especially her flirtation with the geologist, who even followed her on one of her burglary excursions and brought her home afterwards. And why she picked that one house to break in is still a mystery. Further, her burglary activities were far from successful, and she even took great risks for being caught in the act by staying in the house even in cases where inhabitants proved present. The synopsis on the festival website suggested that she did not want to steal anything especially, but instead wanted to (I quote) "secretly sample other lives".

Contradicting stories about mother (we see her never returning a call) and an uncle (mother told him to have called back repeatedly, and that Yaeli ignored these calls). In the finale we hear the story of her mother and what kept her away, but I did not get what it was all about and what it will mean for their future relationship. And similarly, I'm at a loss what her intentions were with the leopard, entering the cage a few times and even taking a walk outside with the animal on a leash. Finally, a meta confusion is that this movie does not appear in the final listing for the audience award, so we'll never know that the average festival visitor thought about it.

The Dead Sea is one of Israel's biggest tourist attractions and the surrounding desert is immensely picturesque. It's nice to see some of that in a movie, although we don't get much because burglary and the wilderness don't exactly mix. That's one of the problems for the protagonist; even in what passes for a town by desert standards, she doesn't enjoy the anonymity a big city would give her.

The protagonist-- the burglar-- is flawed and apparently not entirely sane. She breaks the rules, but not in a charismatic, rebellious, Thelma-and-Louise way. She breaks rules we don't like to see broken. Not an easy person to sympathize with, but we can sympathize regarding the problem she faces, which is how to keep body and soul together when her mother suddenly disappears.

Besides the handful of desert shots, the movie boasts artsy close- ups of the kind that aid suspense by assuming unexpected points of view. Once, for a second, I didn't even know what I was looking at at all. And I wasn't always sure what was happening and why. But the heroine's risky break-ins are consistently suspenseful and there is a fine little gallery of actors on hand for the anti-heroine to be alienated from.