Film Description
| JELLYFISH (MEDUZOT) | ||
| Directors: | Shira Geffen, Etgar Keret |  |
| Country: | Israel/France | |
| Year: | 2007 | |
| Language: | Hebrew with English subtitles | |
| Time: | 78 minutes | |
| Rating: | 14A | |
| Principal Cast: | Sarah Adler, Nikol Leidman, Gera Sandler, Noa Knoller, Ma-nenita De Latorre, Ilanit Ben Yaakov, Zharira Charifai | |
| Trailer: | View the trailer for this film | |
| SCREENING TIMES | |||
| Thursday, October 16 | 7:00 PM | Art Gallery of Windsor | Tickets: $10.00 |
This is a magical film that surprises and unsettles in the most delicate of ways. Connections and relationships come into focus against a backdrop of memory and, perhaps, imagination. We are startled by disconnections, then excited by the mysteries gradually revealed. Jellyfish is a hybrid of the conventional and the mildly experimental, at once playful and deadly serious, and constantly unpredictable. Holding this elaborate web together are two filmmakers, Shira Geffen and Etgar Keret, who won the prestigious Caméra d'Or for best first feature at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival.
While the characters are relatively easy to describe, the narrative is consciously elusive. Batya (Sarah Adler) is a young woman who works for a company catering the wedding of a young couple, Keren (Noa Knoller) and Michael (Gera Sandler). Joy (Ma-nenita De Latorre) is a middle-aged Filipino caregiver for the elderly who speaks no Hebrew. Galia (Ilanit Ben Yaakov), an actress, arranges for Joy to take care of her sickly mother, Malka (Zharira Charifai). What ensues is a series of overlapping encounters, some of which take on shades of the surreal.
The bride breaks her ankle, forcing the couple to cancel their Caribbean honeymoon and stay in a Tel Aviv hotel. Batya unexpectedly becomes a foster parent when a little girl walks out of the ocean with no parent in sight. Joy, unable to communicate with the irritated people she works for, despairs her separation from her own five-year-old son back in the Philippines. And Michael, the dreams of his honeymoon in shreds, unexpectedly meets an attractive middle-aged resident of the hotel.
None of this description does justice to the distinctive and idiosyncratic tone and arc of Jellyfish. Its joys lie in its visual wit and the juxtaposition of the unexpected with the everyday. Who is the little girl who has emerged from the ocean? What lessons can be learned from the dignified patience of a Filipino woman seemingly adrift in a culture not her own? Geffen and Keret guide us through this maze with a skilled touch and masterful control, presenting a finely realized portrait of a society - and a people - teetering on the edge of emotional chaos.
Dimitri Eipides
© 2007 Toronto International Film Festival Group.
