Maor Zagouri's bare coming-of-age story and the film in question that falls flat on its face: the Haifa Festival has started

The festival in Carmel kicked off with "Don't worry my dear" which promised a lot but turned out to be messy and frustrating, and continued with "Virgins", the provocative debut of the acclaimed Israeli creator, which included impressive acting displays.

And also: the amazing story of "Finding Richard" and "The Suit" which was a huge surprise.

A report from the Haifa Festival

Naama only

11/10/2022

Tuesday, October 11, 2022, 11:33 Updated: 11:57

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Frustrating precisely because of the potential.

From "Don't worry my love" (photo: Haifa Film Festival)

One can argue quite a bit about opening films for festivals and what actually makes a film worthy and suitable for the title, but the bottom line is its purpose is to intrigue, to interest, to stimulate discussion.

From this point of view, the Haifa Festival, which opened on Saturday night with the film "Don't worry my dear", won the entire box office, one of the most talked about films of the last few months, for better and especially for worse.

Olivia Wilde's second film as a director is making headlines right from its production stage, following the dismissal of actor Shia LeBeouf, his replacement by musician and actor Harry Styles, and rumors that the director separated from her husband following an affair with the replacement actor.

Ahead of the film's premiere at this year's Venice Film Festival, the story got even more complicated, and if that wasn't bad enough, it also received unflattering reviews to say the least.

Now that you can finally see what it's all about on the local screens, you can declare that it is indeed a mess.

Like "Stafford Wives", "Pleasantville" and quite a few films before it, "Don't worry my dear" returns to the patriarchal 1950s with a dark and genre twist.

Alice (Florence Pugh) is a housewife who lives with her beloved husband Jack (Stiles) in "Project Victory", a gated, engineered and well-planned community.

Against a background of sweet Americana, the women say goodbye to their husbands every day, who go out into the desert in colorful vintage cars.

No one knows what her husband does or even what Project Victory is about.

At first glance it looks like a period film, but something feels a little too neat and tidy, too designed to be real.

Alice's reality slowly begins to unravel and she suffers from violent hallucinations and sudden urges to self-destruct.

She knows that if she gets the name of "crazy" she will lose not only her close friends, but also endanger her husband's job and their place in the project - which depends on their obedience and the approval of the founder and community leader Frank (Chris Pine).

Despite all this, she decides to investigate what is actually happening around her, an investigation that will force her to break all the laws she knows very well she must not cross.

"Don't worry my dear" is a rather frustrating film precisely because of its potential.

In the beginning, he manages to sway and intrigue enough for us to want to accompany Alice on her journey to uncover the truth, but the more we know, the less we understand.

Not because the film is too confusing or complex, God forbid - the solutions just turn out to be stupid, illogical and even lazy.

The game is mostly fun and the art design makes you happy, but it's not enough to cover such a weak script, manneristic editing and an oppressive soundtrack.

In the end it feels like a movie we've already seen, and in better and more eloquent versions.

Even as a feminist fairy tale, the film falls on its face with a meager and completely superficial message, when it dwells for a moment on more complex nuances but refuses to explore them in depth.

A solution that could have saved the situation was, for example, to tell the story from the point of view of Bunny, Alice's rougher and more interesting friend.

Wilde took this role for herself and performed it well, so it's a shame she didn't know how to put him in the center of attention.

Following the lost king

If you wanted a more successful film that takes its viewers back to the 50s, the program also offered a much better option in the form of "The Outfit" (originally The Outfit).

This is the first film as a director of Graham Moore, who won an Oscar for the screenplay of "The Imitation Game".

His new film surpasses the above-mentioned Oscar winner in every respect - tighter, more exciting, better written and directed. The film takes place entirely in a single location - the shop of a lovable British immigrant named Leonard (Mark Rylance, great as always), who left his homeland in favor of cold Chicago In his shop, he tailors suits for various clients, many of whom belong to a local crime family that dominates the neighborhood.

After the film makes sure to arrange all the tools on the board and make it clear to us who is related to whom and why, everything explodes in one bloody night - the son of the head of the family (Dylan O'Brien) appears in the store with a gunshot wound, with one of his father's confidants (Johnny Flynn) next to him. .

The two don't trust each other and they don't really trust Leonard, but circumstances force them to work together, as they all try to manipulate each other for their own ends.

The story also includes the father (Simon Russell Beale) and Leonard's devoted employee (Zoe Deutsch), who is connected to the crime family in different ways.

The "suit" doesn't aim very high, but does what it does in an incredibly skillful and precise way.

All the actors are great and fit their characters like a glove, the directing combines tension, drama and humor well and the script manages to gradually add more and more details in a way that feels right and natural.

A nice reminder that even a small film can be a huge surprise - because if done right, it surpasses even big and "important" films by far.

More in Walla!

Haifa Film Festival: the complete recommendation guide

To the full article

From "Finding Richard" (Photo: Haifa Film Festival)

And speaking of Brits - another film that made its local debut at the festival is "Finding Richard", the new film by director Stephen Frears and screenwriters Steve Coogan and Jeff Pope, who worked together on "Philomena".

The film returns to a story from the curious side of the news about a decade ago - the discovery of the body of King Richard III, after it was claimed for years that it had been thrown into the river and lost forever.

Richard III reigned over England for only two years and his character known to the public, mainly because of Shakespeare's play bearing his name, depicts him as a hunchbacked villain who murdered his princely nephews in order to rise to power by fraud.

This unflattering description touches the heart of Philippa (Sally Hawkins), an ordinary woman without much prior knowledge of history.

She is drawn into an obsessive investigation following the slandered king and is convinced that history has not been kind to him.

She realizes that almost every known detail about the king is inaccurate,

Philippa sympathizes so much with Richard Ben-Hither because she too is judged first of all because of her health condition.

Although she does not have a humpback, she suffers from chronic fatigue, which erupts in stressful situations.

And there is quite a bit to stress about: her boss does not appreciate her abilities and sees her illness before her, her ex-husband (Steve Coogan, charming as usual) has a new girlfriend, and she also has two sons, not exactly a relaxing experience.

All of these are pushed aside when Richard III enters her life - also in the literal sense, because she hallucinates him by her side during the quest when he is handsome, impressive and without a hump, for some reason.

For moments it looks like a film about madness, but the film understands this and often laughs at the eccentric totality of its heroine.

Many turn up their noses at the little woman from the "fan club" who thinks she knows better than historians and archaeologists, mainly because she repeats and justifies her claims with talk of feelings and sensations.

She is a character that is easy for many to underestimate, but her commitment to the strange task also buys her quite a few fans, first of all her loving family who does not give up on her even in her most puzzling moments.

The result is a rather heartwarming film, but one that doesn't try to present Philippa's true story as a total victory and acknowledges the unfair treatment she received from the academy, and more broadly, the public's eyesore for people, and especially women, like her.

Between the creature of love and the creature of death.

From "Virgins" (Photo: Boaz Yonatan Yaakov)

"Virgins", which premiered yesterday as part of the Israeli competition at the festival, also presents a character who is somewhat rejected by society.

The coming-of-age film written and directed by Maor Zagori follows a boy (Maor Levy) who lives somewhere in the Arabah and faces more problems than the average teenager - the difficult mental state of his mother (Chen Amsalem-Zagori), the distance and harshness of his father (Amos Tamm), the girls who ignore him at school , the little brother (Or Adi) who causes trouble and also the fact that he, and sorry for the French, still can't masturbate.

It's hard to surrender to your sexuality at home with no doors and no privacy, so the hero looks for himself outside the home with a more experienced friend (Itamar Kigler) and a cheeky and bold girl (Liana Ayon), who teach him everything he needs to know about sex, death and the relationship between them.

"Virgins" takes place in the nineties and often mentions it, with broadcasts of "The Heart" on TV and innovative inventions such as Tetris and a home computer.

The time is no coincidence - it not only corresponds to the author's teenage years, but also allows him to completely disconnect the hero from the world around him, without Internet porn or chats to make friends.

The confusing story and photography by Boaz Jonathan Yaakov create a dream-like atmosphere where the boundaries of reality are quite flexible.

The remote hole in which the family lives isolates it from the world and allows the boy to dive into difficult and rather dark mental depths, with the center of interest being the eros and tantus of the Freudian model - the instinct of love and sexuality that lives alongside the instinct of death and even the desire to die.

Both sides are particularly prominent in the relationship between the troubled mother and her son, based on an almost violent love in nature with oedipal touches.

The film works best when it surrenders to the bare emotion, which has beauty and ugliness at the same time.

Despite the colorful and cute moments of nostalgia, this is far from a light film.

The hero, his parents, siblings and friends all hide disturbing sides as well.

This platform allows the film to present a variety of difficult and even provocative moments: from sexual conversations in the middle of the Memorial Day ceremony, through the moment when the hero catches his parents in bed, to a bedtime story about a boy who threatens the life of his baby brother.

The actors go all out with every such moment, from the small and everyday to the most absurd and symbolic.

Chen Amsalem-Zagouri as a mother who has not yet fully internalized the role of the responsible adult and is unable to overcome the loss of her youth, and the child played by Or Adi are particularly worthy of mention.

There is no trickier role than a cute little boy (and one with a speech impediment!), but Adi is only annoying when that's what the role demands of him and makes every problematic situation completely natural.

When "Virgins" tries to be clever and play with the audience's expectations, it weakens significantly.

The story hides some surprises that can be identified already in the early stages, and it is not clear how much the film tries to hide them.

Either way, they don't really strengthen it, on the contrary - they reduce the drama and interest in the main story and leave the viewer mostly confused.

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