Jellyfish in a jar
Opened and closed with a Hebrew version of Edith Piaf’s La vie en rose, Etgar Keret and Shira Geffen’s debut feature Jellyfish [+see also:
trailer
film profile] showed the melancholic charm of its isolated characters this afternoon at the film’s competition Critics’ Week screening.
Intertwining three stories of daily life in Tel Aviv, the plot is similar to those in Keret’s novels. One of the most popular writers in his country – an expert at depicting subtle portraits of quite ordinary people and carefully circumventing the issue of Middle Eastern conflicts (except by allusion) – with Jellyfish (co-directed with his partner) the novelist transposes his disenchanted vision of human beings tossed around by a flood of events and struggling with loneliness and serious communication problems.
From its very beautiful opening wedding scene, the film centres on Batya (Sarah Adler), a young waitress who has just broken up with her lover. Batya’s encounter with a lost child on a beach one day plunges her into a form of regression.
Abandoned by a father who shacked up with a young anorexic and by a mother with a keen interest in charity work yet blind to the suffering of her own daughter, Batya embodies the recurrent theme of lost innocence in Jellyfish.
Gradual misfortune hits a young married couple (Noa Knoller and Gera Sandler), who are forced to spend their honeymoon in a rundown city centre hotel instead of in the Caribbean as planned after Keren (Sandler) breaks her leg on the evening of the wedding.
The final character of the film – Filipino housemaid Joy (Ma-nenita De Latorre) – acts as a mediator between the children, busy with their own lives, and their ill and ageing parents.
While death lurks in Jellyfish, the light irony of its treatment and the universal dimension of this patchwork of lives, tenderly portrayed by the directing duo, helps sidestep the trap of melancholy and lends the film a nostalgic air similar to when one reminisces over old photos instead of living, or offering oneself "a boat in a bottle" instead of enjoying the sea just before one’s eyes.
Produced by France’s Les Films du Poisson (55%) and Israel’s Lama Films, the €1.14m Jellyfish received €300,000 from Arte France Cinéma (half in pre-sales, half in co-production), as well as pre-sales from Canal+ and TPS.
Pyramide is selling the title worldwide.
(Translated from French)
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