Noodle

I recently saw this at the 2008 Palm Springs International Film Festival where it was among the announced audience favorites at the end of the festival. It's a good story from Israeli director Ayelet Menahemi who co-wrote the screenplay along with Shemi Yarhin. It's a sweet little comedic drama about Miri (Mili Avital) who is a woman who is only in her late 30's but is already twice widowed. Mili works as a El Al flight attendant and lives with her sister Gila (Anat Waxman) who is having marriage problems with her husband Izzy (Alon Aboutboul). One day the apartment's Chinese housekeeper (Vicky Lyn) asks Miri if she can leave her six year old son (BoaQui Chen) for an hour and Miri agrees to watch him but the mother never returns. They can't communicate with the Chinese only speaking boy and they give him the nickname Noodle while they search for his mother and ultimately a way to reunite the mother and child through the help of Mati (Yiftach Klein) who is a family friend and former neighbor of Miri and Gila. The story is sometimes hard to believe but it's a good ride none the less and certainly a charming tale. Director Menahemi has had a very sporadic career in his 20 years as a director making only three documentaries, three narrative features and one short in all that time. With this, his third feature narrative, I would hope he is inspired enough by it's success to create more films. It won the Grand Jury Prize and Best Screenplay at the Montreal World Film Festival and I'm sure it's been a crowd pleaser at other festivals it's played besides Montral and Palm Springs. I would give this an 8.0 out of 10 and recommend it.

I enjoyed this film a lot more than most American films I have seen lately. Granted, the plot is somewhat absurd and based on improbable coincidences--but the characters are real. I have often found this true of Israeli films. We get the feeling that we are looking at a real slice of life, whereas in the typical American film we seem to be in some make-believe world. I don't know why American scriptwriters can't seem to create the same mood that their Israeli counterparts can.I especially liked the way the child's personality developed. The scene where he teaches the adults how to eat Chinese food is priceless. It's also refreshing to see a film about essentially decent people (except for the bureaucrats).

I came across this on Netflix and was intrigued, having never heard of the film before. I decided to give it a chance without even bothering to look at a rating or reviews. I really enjoyed the acting and writing, which is top notch for keeping you involved and interested, as the various back-stories of the intertwined characters is slowly revealed. There is a nice combination of light comedy, drama and adventure, mixed with relationships, grief, and more, that doesn't seem to follow any specific genre template. As the characters move towards solving their own deep issues, the story arch of re-uniting a lost child with his mother has universal appeal.

The film has a charming atmosphere of everyday and "it could really happen" even though it certainly is a fairy tale and there are several almost impossible elements in the plot - security issues, how children are normally treated, and time discrepancies. The shots are well planned and acting is natural. Somehow the lighting always seems natural. I especially liked the quick conversations with Gila and her friends, and Gila's daughter's sababa-comments. Many scenes were fresh - not as predictable as you'd expect. As always, the behind scenes bonus material on the DVD is worth watching. This movie leaves you in a good mood!

Isreal, which has certainly had it's share of quirky comedy's, now has yet another film to add to it's ever growing list of contenders for world cinema. Noodle is a cute,low key comedy about an woman in her late 30's, working for El Al airlines as an in flight attendant,who's life is thrown into a tizzy by a five year old Chinese boy,who has been left by his mother in her flat, while she promised to be back in an hour, only to disappear. What follows is the woman,trying to establish contact with the boy's mother, and realizing that she is going to be the unwilling babysitter of a young boy who speaks only Mandarin, and not a word of Hebrew. The boy is given the nick name Noodle, as they're not sure what his real name is. What I admired about this little film is that, although it does dwell in sappy sentimentality, it never lowers or cheapens itself to the level of a John Hughes film (in other words,it's not a smarmy sitcom,with young children who know seem to know more than adults do). A little bit of searching out may be in order to see this little gem.