Jellyfish (Zeitgeist Films, NR)

This type of film makes great award bait, allowing critics and audiences alike to congratulate themselves for spotting the connections the filmmakers have so cleverly planted throughout.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jellyfish, the debut feature film of Israeli directors Shira Geffen and Etgar Keret, has one of those puzzle-piece plots in which the lives of seemingly unrelated characters have a surprising number of interconnections. Batia (Sarah Adler) is a caterer at Karen’s (Noa Knoller) wedding, which is also attended by Joy (Ma-Nenita De Latorre), a Filipino home-care attendant for one of the guests. Joy phones her family from a pay phone under a poster of Batia’s mother, a prominent charity fundraiser. And so on. The connections are too many to enumerate or to be credible in any universe but the one created by the directors for this particular film.

This type of film makes great award bait, allowing critics and audiences alike to congratulate themselves for spotting the connections the filmmakers have so cleverly planted throughout. Case in point: the 2006 Best Picture Oscar for Crash. Jellyfish hasn’t fared badly in the award department, either; it won the Camera d’Or (for best feature film debut) and SACD Screenwriting Award at the 2007 Cannes Festival.

As a viewer, you have to be willing to go with a filmmaker’s initial premise or you might just as well stay home, and this is particularly true with puzzle-piece movies. Although I’m no great fan of obvious puzzle plots (outside of Agatha Christie) I did enjoy Jellyfish, primarily because the contrivances serve as a device to allow the filmmakers to tell the stories of a number of different characters who would otherwise have no business being in the same film. Viewed from that perspective, Jellyfish is a successful film that centers on the stories of three women, none of whom are particularly remarkable but each of whom is unique.

The most interesting story concerns Batia, the sad-sack daughter of successful parents who gets dumped by her boyfriend and fired from her catering job, and lives in a dreary flat with a leaky roof. She drifts passively through life like a jellyfish washed up on the beach by the tides, until one day a silent little girl walks out of the sea and the two outsiders form a mystical bond.

Karen breaks her leg at her wedding reception (don’t ask), forcing the cancellation of a planned Caribbean honeymoon in favor of a stay at a Tel Aviv hotel. For reasons never explored, Karen spends the relocated honeymoon complaining about everything and neglecting her new husband (Gera Sandler), which not surprisingly encourages him to seek more pleasant company elsewhere.

Joy offers a refreshing contrast to the self-centered behavior of many of the Israelis in Jellyfish. She’s a Filipino who supports her son by doing work the Israelis don’t want to do, like caring for their cranky elderly parents. Her outsider’s perspective offers a less-than-flattering view of some aspects of Israeli society, including racism and unmotivated cruelty toward outsiders.

All the actors are good and the technical elements of Jellyfish, particularly the cinematography by Antoine Heberle, are outstanding. It was filmed on location in Tel Aviv, but there’s very little exploitation of that specific setting. This is a disappointing choice for those of us who like a little travelogue in our foreign films, but does place the emphasis squarely on the interactions among characters while making the point that similar stories could take place anywhere. | Sarah Boslaugh