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| Jellyfish |
There may be no more beguilingly beautiful or original Israeli film than this marvellously realised début from the gifted team of Etgar Keret and Shira Geffen.
Winner of the Camera d'Or for Best First Feature at last year's Cannes Film Festival, the film begins as an ensemble piece about four characters whose tangential lives intersect in present-day Tel Aviv. First, there is Batya, who works for a wedding caterer but has little to her name other than a leaky apartment - that is, until she takes in a young child apparently abandoned at a local beach.
Then, there are newlyweds Keren and Michael, whose plans for an idyllic Caribbean honeymoon are scuttled when the beautiful bride breaks her ankle in an accident. Finally, there is Joy, a non-Hebrew-speaking Filipino domestic carer who cannot escape the irony that she is not back home looking after her own young son, but helping one of her elderly clients reconcile with an estranged daughter.
But just when one has become comfortable with these intersecting storylines and overlapping encounters, the film magically transforms into an unlikely mosaic of modern Israel life. The quartet wend their way through Israel's most cosmopolitan city and their lives take on a magical aura. Back by popular demand.
