Ga'agua

Savi Gabizon presents us with a unique take on parenthood, on love, on mourning and on a few other very mundane issues. He gets superb performance from Shai Avivi, and Assi Levy, isn't falling far behind him. (and even that is simply due to a shorter amount of screen time). In fact every aspect of this film is of the highest quality, but it seems to me that Gabizon simply fell in love with his own unique twists and turns and even after he made all his points and told us all he had to tell, the movie drags on for 10 extra minutes or so. And than eventually ends exactly where we knew it'll end.

So instead of fresh and unique view on all the issues I counted at the beginning, we're left with a "soap opera" and not in a good way. It was so close to being a perfect 10, and ended being an 8/10 - simple waste.

The screenplay (which won the so-called Israeli Oscar, the Ophir award) proceeds a little like a detective story. A father's inquiries about the dead son he never met reveal surprise after interconnected surprise. Certainly the father develops a "longing" for his son, so the movie's English-language title is appropriate, but the Hebrew title, Ga'agua, is a strange word to use in reference to someone you never met. It's more appropriate for someone you once knew or somewhere you once frequented. I wonder whether it isn't indicating that the son is merely a symbol for the long-past relationship that produced him. In any case, it appears that as the father learns about his son, he also learns about himself, and although there is a dreamlike congruence about the elements of the movie-- a young girl is in love with a boy too old for her, the boy is in love with his teacher-- nothing is embarrassingly artificial except a coincidental meeting (in the graveyard) with just the right person to propel the plot forward.

The film takes place in Akko (Acre), for whatever reason. The mother remarks at one point that she doesn't have to worry about money (and that's why she never approached the father regarding the son), but I'm not sure that if you don't have to worry about money you live in Akko. Be that as it may, it's good for a movie to have a specific location and Akko is an unusual one. We get to see a little of it, and more would have been welcome.

Besides winning the award for best screenplay, the movie was nominated across the board for acting-- best actor, actress, supporting actor, supporting actress, and for that matter casting.