Antarctica ...lässt Herzen schmelzen

i always enjoy watching foreign films, it is fascinating to watch people in other countries live and love.

i think that this gay film is one of the best. i saw the unrated version, so at the beginning, it felt like a hot gay porn. three years later, the film returned to "normal." unlike some other gay films with weak stories, bad actors, etc, this film has an riveting storyline, and good actors. it seems that the male actors are all gay, i wonder if they are gays in real life. because there were not afraid of doing any male to male actions.

and i have never watched a gay film from israel before, very fascinating. i truly enjoyed it. so i rated it a 9.

Life is full of metaphors and this is a great interpretation. A romantic tale, a love of fantasy and could have beens............... I really enjoyed this movie. It was engaging and had me hooked from the start. It was hot and the mirrors started to steam as i was introduced to the characters, satisfied with the pornesque start i didn't much care for content. The shots and the arrangement of images would have satisfied me for the entirety of the movie. But little did i know that i was just watching the caterpillar before the butterfly. The process is the movie. Well done to the director and the actors to a collage of beauty. "No matter how big the world is from a village to a city of millions you live within the same shell with the same circumference."

The film begins with a serial depiction of pick-ups by one of the film's characters, that appears promising - then, oh no, the character cries in the shower: the emptiness of his life, we gather, and also that the film is fishy.

One bold leap three years ahead.

Dear director, do not attempt such things if you have not foregrounded a story, however elliptic.

Actually there is no story, just amateurish shots of characters that confuse our endeavors to figure what happens, why this one appears, if it is central or peripheral to what is going on, then a female character appears played by a male actor, and the film by that point becomes "inferential" at best: we "infer" that this "transvestitism" is an Almodovar-like take; that the film shows the givings and misgivings of destiny in a group of people that meet, or fail to do so, in the end; we "infer" that the "alien thing" is comic, and stands for tenderness in the very end.

But the transvestitism is actually a travesty: a travesty for comedy, for relief, for enacting any sense of locality; the "alien thing" not only fails to engage in locality as well, but actually forecloses any sense of geographical specificity, and becomes a psychotic symptom for avoiding to do so (another film from Israel, that met with critical success, "The Bubble" engaged in the specificity of time and place, though it presented a nihilistic political point of view that, combined with its cinematic tendentiousness, turned it into hypocrisy).

It is a sad, expansive phenomenon that such uninformed sense of engagement masquerades as a kind of hurt sensibility, and a plea for sentimental and spiritual gathering of souls, a plea for love beyond our shortcomings, be them racial, sexual, ethnic ones. The film reads like a juvenile attempt at themes it fails to attack: what it means to be lonely and insecure and crave for it or be well-poised etc. but all this is to "infer"; let alone the preposterous thing going on between the journalist and the salesman: a journalist that has a humane streak falling for a gossipy, cliché-carved little nelly? There is no plausibility concerning the hovering, changing sentiments and this is so severe that comes off depressively and in the end, with the actually mad closure, pathologically I dare say.

Or,the three years leap is slumped on us for signaling the older dancer's reawakening of feelings for the young dancer? For the story we did not see in the beginning? That, OK, could be evolved in a later part of the film for bigger dramatic effect, but for what? So that we learn they passed three weeks together? This is the kind of thing the late Quentin Crisp serenely and acerbically mocked as three weeks of "meaningful relationship". This must also be the writer/director's sense of meaningful film-making.

I had pretty high expectations of this movie after reading a very short synopsis; I really like ensemble movies and 'Antarctica' being a gay movie and from Israel added to the attraction (I see a lot of Hollywood movies as well). I came out pretty disappointed.

There was very little story in this and hardly any substance. I found it rather shallow while the premise was full of possibilities for an engrossing film. There is great potential in ensemble movies but only when a director and/or a writer know what to do with it… clearly in this case there could have been much more of a plot if the writer had left out a couple of characters and had focused on the remaining ones for some depth and background.

I am somebody who enjoys striking images - by which I do not mean pictures of sunsets and lavish homes, but images that, whether they are pretty of ugly, enhance the story - but there was no beauty at all to be found in this movie. I am not referring to the cast because some of them were actually rather handsome, but the sets: apartments, kitchens, streets, surroundings… nothing spoke to me. It looked like nobody had been hired for cinematography. Now I am aware of the budget factor but there is a big gap between lush Hollywood sets and cramped TL-lit spaces. From where I was sitting a little more attention to imagery would not have distracted from the story; it would probably have enhanced it.

But the one thing I could not get over was the casting of the character 'Omer's Mother'. This person was so ridiculously out of place that it hurt. I sincerely wonder what the deal was here because I cannot believe that any casting director who takes themselves seriously would voluntarily cast this character the way it was done, destroying any credibility the movie had to begin with.

'Antarctica' in my view is mediocre at best, I give it 5 out of 10.

In 'Antarctica', director Yair Hochner tries to create a film in the same style Milos Forman used many times: an array of characters, seem to be unconnected; and then towards the end of the film they all come together somehow.

Well, Films like that can be very good if you direct them with refinement and intelligence; and you have a great script and cast to match.

This can only partially be said on 'Antarctica'. It is in a way interesting to watch the behaviour of young gay men & women in a country like Israel; We do not see much of that. But then you find they sort of behave in the same way as they would in another western country; This story could have taken place in Rome or Madrid or Amsterdam. Apart from the fact the characters spoke Hebrew, I could not find any special Israeli angle that would make this feature worth seeing even more.

So we are left with just the story proper.

I do tend to agree some scenes were too long - the bar scenes for example - and some too short. Some characters were developed more then others; and only towards half way you actually discover who in fact is the lead character..which I found puzzling.

I would have preferred the film concentrating on Omer (the lead) as for me he was the most intriguing character, and less on his sister for example; or the guy from the first act in the film, which eventually had very little to do with the plot, except the fact most male characters went through his bed. And for the life of me I could not understand why they used a man to portray Omer's mom?

But this film is still worth watching if only to discover the lead actor, Tomer Ilan. This young man had obviously a lot of talent; he sparkles intelligence and that even makes him more good looking then he already is. Great actor casting, and I hope we will see more of him.

The rest of the cast is quite good, although they was no need for brilliant acting in this film.

To summarise: great little film to watch on your DVD player on a cold evening off.

8 of 10 from me.