Corduroy (Photo: Yichat Hot)
Definitions like "voice of a generation" are a double-edged sword.
They can mark a particular work as important or trendy at a particular moment, but they also establish a status for it as a product of its time, as an answer or response to the situation existing at the time of its publication.
In its first moments, "Cordroy" looks as if it is aimed exactly there, for "Girls" and "Euphoria".
Or worse, another story that chirps about the distracted "young generation" staring at the phone instead of living in the moment.
Fortunately, in its first two episodes it reveals itself as something else - a smart and emotional series, one that devotes itself to the ugly and dark sides of its characters and still manages to make us like them, or at least want to know what will happen to them.
In a way, Corduroy, created, written and directed by Hadas Ben Aroya Lahut, is a brilliant Trojan horse.
Through the extreme moments, the conversation starters, she also steals from us the more delicate, sensitive and sophisticated sides, those that not only show what is happening but also why, how and whether there is a solution and redemption.
It kicks off with all the noise, bells and whistles you'd expect from a "wild series about young thrill-seekers", including toilet lines, extravagant costumes and surprising sexual adventures.
We accompany the heroine Daniel (Der Zozovsky) in a strange nocturnal adventure alongside Danny Rupp in his own role, between a boring date in a fashionable bar and attempts to initiate a threesome with another partner, in the form of Niver Madar.
It's fun, it's funny for a few moments and it happens very quickly, but it's just not enough and Daniel is already looking for the next goal, even before she finished at the previous station.
The relentless pursuit of stories that are more fun to tell than to experience is simply exhausting, but that's the whole point - we experience exactly what Daniel experienced herself.
Bored of Danny Rupp's never-ending strange stories, the camera stops on her face for a long, almost excruciating shot.
We see how her eyes are drawn back to her phone and how she fights the instinct to escape the conversation, while we ourselves escape the story from heaven to her sublimely photographed boredom.
We're as frustrated with the impressive professions she invents to impress her matches on the dating app as we are with her real profession, a boring job at a startup where her only friend and secret partner is her boss (Yeftah Klein).
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leaving her figure close to the ground.
Der Zozovsky with Niver Medar and Eric Berman, "Cordroy" (Photo: HOT)
And there is also Ido (Eric Berman), a new employee who seems to live on a different planet than the one where Danielle runs between bars and parties.
He is a rather miserable type with no hobbies and no social circle, but perhaps this misery, or the desperation that stems from it, is the one thing that Daniel and Lou have in common.
The relationship formed between them begins hesitantly but flies at breakneck speed between friendship, burning hatred and instant love.
Here, too, there is a certain gap between the photogenic title about an affair between a wild young woman and a married man and what we actually see - two broken people whose anxieties and traumas speak for themselves, and shine on each other in the ugliest way possible.
It's a meeting full of mistakes, incessant crossing of borders and crooked communication, but we want to keep watching it for the same reasons the characters stay side by side - it's exciting, extreme, interesting.
Of course, we want to decipher the reasons and the balance of power, and above all, to see where all this can lead, for better or for worse.
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On the border between the sexual and the romantic, the intimate and the alienated.
"Cordroy" (Photo: HOT)
Ben Aroya has already proven in the films "People Who Are Not Me" and "Someone Will Love Someone" that she knows how to cast emotional depth, drama and meaning into relationships on the border between the sexual and the romantic, the intimate and the estranged.
This blurring of boundaries happens in every scene in "Cordroy", even those that don't have a hint of sex appeal.
Daniel lives in a kind of mirror maze where she is rewarded for contradictory things, for the light and young image but also for every opportunity to "surprise for good" and reveal a deeper or more mature side.
Men want her to be interested in their lives, but are surprised to find that she expects them to be interested in her back.
Beyond the precise direction and the writing that never stops re-examining every situation it presents us, a lot of credit should also be given to Zozovsky here.
Daniel is a character full of internal contradictions on a level that almost requires her to switch between several characters throughout one scene, and she manages to do it time and time again.
More than that - even when she acts like a monster or a caricature, Zozovsky keeps her grounded, human and empathetic, when sometimes just a short look at her face is enough to know exactly what motivates her.
And most importantly - she leaves us curious enough to want to see her next move as well.
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Corduroy - series
TV review
Hadas ben Aroya
