Customer Reviews

Jaffa

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4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I have been a fas of the Film Movement library of foreign and indie movies for some time now, and have rarely been disappointed. This movie was no exception.

"Jaffa" (106 min; originally released in 2009) is named after the historic (and achitecturally very interesting) town of Jaffa, bordering on the south side of Tel Aviv. The Wolf family runs a garage in Jaffa. Besides the father and his 2 kids (20 yr. old boy Meir, and 21 yr. old girl Mali), there are also 2 Arab employees in the shop, a boy named Toufik and his dad. Unbeknownst to anyone, Mali and Toufik have fallen in love, Mali is pregnant and they are planning to elope soon. Then in one dramatic moment, everything changes when Meir and Toufik get in a fight, with tragic results. Mali now faces some painful choices within her family. Most interestingly, in the last 30 min. or so, the movie picks up the story 9 years later. Why? You'll just have to see for yourself how it all plays out!

Let me immediately disagree with the first reviewer's basic sentiment that "it just doesn't work". Sorry, but it actually works very nicely. No, this is not standard "Hollywood fare", and that's perfectly fine with me. In fact I wish Hollywood would stop making the umteenth "refresh" of say the Superman or Batman movies, and actually come up with some original ideas. I also was impressed by the acting work from Dana Ivgy, who plays Mali. In all, I quite liket this movie. Last but not least, I was in Israel last November for a week, and our hotel in Tel Aviv looks out onto Jaffa. It's a great place and I would highly recommend visiting it.

Following the Jewish-Arab dynamic in Israel is many things. It can be depressing, infuriating and even filled with hope. But it is never boring.

Jaffa follows much the same pattern.

(special thanks to Film Movement for providing me with a screener!)

I can't help but think that Israel must be a very unpleasant place to live. I wouldn't mind visiting there sometime (I'm a sucker for history), but I certainly wouldn't want to live there. This movie, a 2009 Israeli film, does nothing to change my mind about that.

Jaffa tells the story of a young Jewish woman who is in love with a Palestinian man who works in her father's garage. She's hiding her relationship with him from her parents and the two have plans to elope. She's also not yet told her parents that she's pregnant. Meantime her boyfriend has to put up with lots of crap from her brother, who seems to resent the fact that his sister's boyfriend is much better at his job than he is. The day before the wedding, the two come to blows and the brother is accidentally killed. Things go downhill from there.

I never really connected with any of the characters in this movie. The Palestinian man seems like the only really good one in the bunch. The girl's parents and brother all seem to dislike Palestinians in general to greater and lesser degrees. As for the girl herself, if she could bother to tell the truth at just about any point in the film, most of what happens wouldn't have happened. Instead she's constantly lying and creating more and more problems for herself and everyone around her.

On a technical level this is a decent enough film. It's well shot and looks good, but the story is basically a retred of Romeo and Juliet without that play's sense of fun and happiness. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but in this movie, with these characters, it really does not work.

I really wanted to like this, and started out doing so. However, there were too many plot points that just didn't make sense. And Mari and Meir's mother really bothered me. She was so disconnected that I couldn't believe she was their bio-mom. Why did Mari decide to finally tell Tourek? C'mon, after 9 years? Why did she suddenly leave her parents' home? All of a sudden, there's an Aunt Suzie? Then, the final scene was just ludicrous. Shiren thinks her dad's dead, so all he can do is sit on the beach and stare at her? This movie was a mess.