Clara Hakedosha

I'd say this was a sweet and romantic film, almost in a John Waters style. It's refreshing, honest, and certainly endearing. Each character was a symbol of a virtue or vice, the set direction was campy, and the overall mood was hopeful in the midst of impending doom. I'd like to see more from this director.

As I watched this movie, I was unsure whether it was trying to present a realistic image of common Israeli lives, or if it was complete fantasy. It had the wacky characters and a cinematographic/color style reminiscent of Pedro Almodovar films, although with absolutely none of the exuberance. The featureless architectures colored in dreary pastels, located in grassy nowheres, then juxtaposed in other scenes with environments covered in concrete, lent a very odd and bleak feeling to the film. Buildings seemed devoid of humanizing artistic style--although the style of the film itself was very distinct. Every place seemed deserted, even when there were pedestrians around (walking in all directions without apparent regard to the paths of roads and sidewalks, somewhat like zombies). Often, there was what looked like cement plants nearby, as well as glass objects handy for shattering. The sky seemed to be perpetually overcast, or in twilight, except in the night scenes. Fortunately, there were no references, visual or otherwise, to religion or Israel's governmental politics. If there had been, it would have created a familiarity, corrupting the weird vibe of the film's environment. It was like watching the inhabitants of a semi-abandoned wasteland, a place which could exist anywhere.

This was an interesting film, and I don't know if I've ever seen anything quite like it. Was it entertaining? I'm still not sure, although as a comedy, it wasn't really about laughs, but more about quirks.

I saw Saint Clara in Toronto during the Toronto Film Festival in 1997. It was at a theatre not part of the festival at the time but it felt like it could have been (perhaps it was the year before). As others have said, it had an odd, bleak, futuristic look and feel about it but was enjoyable none the less. I would love to find the DVD or tape so I could see it again. Bernie

The premise of a girl receiving magic powers and disrupting her town is cool, but the movie doesn't exactly live up to it. You want there to be more to her magic powers than predicting the answers on tests. The movie does have a nice ending though and the principal, math teacher, lawyer father, and Uncle Elvis are a blast.

Pals Eddie Tikal (Halil Elohev), skinhead wannabe Rosy (Johnny Peterson) and the boyish-looking Libby (Maya Maron) swallow some pills before entering school. Instead of going to class, however, they are summoned to the principal's office to be questioned about a strange event. It seems that the students at Haifa's Golda Meir Junior High School have turned in perfect scores on a Math test and the perplexed teacher and principal of the school are determined to hunt down and punish the cheater. The teacher asks, "Aren't you guys smart enough to make a few mistakes so we won't catch on that you're cheating?" When they find out, however, that the class did not cheat but were provided answers by a clairvoyant Russian immigrant, their authority is shaken.

Based on a novel by Pavel Kohout, a Czech writer who adapted its story from a screenplay by his wife Jelena, Ari Foman and Ori Sivan's Saint Clara is a film of surreal charm that bears comparison to Bunuel and Truffaut. While it is quirky, it is not self consciously so, and contains characters that we can recognize as real people. Contrary to typical Hollywood fare, the film shows psychic abilities such as clairvoyance to be natural attributes of the human mind, although in this case, according to a family tradition, they will last only until the young girl falls in love. The psychic is 13-year old Clara (Lucy Dubnichek), a very quiet girl with deeply expressive eyes. While she is regarded as odd by her punk classmates, they are more than happy to receive her help on their examinations and equally eager to enlist her help in planning a revolution that never quite gets off the ground.

The oddness in the film is not limited to the students. Mathematics teacher (Joseph El Dror) had a tour of duty in Vietnam where he claims that he once beat international chess champion Bobby Fischer. The principal (Yigal Naor), nattily dressed in a red suit, claims to have made love to French singing star Edith Piaf. On television, we see a weirdly dressed newswoman who constantly speaks about the impending environmental catastrophe and we learn from Rosy that the Richter scale was inspired by Marilyn Monroe. While it has its uneven moments, Saint Clara is an offbeat gem that offers with deadpan humor some intriguing insights into adolescent behavior. As Tikel becomes infatuated with Clara, the film hints at a more conventional outcome but maintains its irresistible charm and originality until the end.