Saving Neta

A standard sentence of advice to short-story writers is "Throw away your first sentence." An audience could be forgiven for thinking that as he assembled the four episodes of Saving Neta, Nir Bergman decided art would be best served if he threw away the last minute of each. But abruptly though each episode might conclude, the audience is quickly caught up in the next. Only the first one starts off slowly, and I suppose Bergman can afford that because it features Rotem Abuhav, a TV star popular enough to carry leading roles in two sitcoms as well as a humorous panel show all broadcast on the same weekly schedule. Her popularity serves her well here, because she plays a snappish figure and we have to believe in her underlying humanity. The only touch that the audience rebelled at came later in the movie, when a singing duo pops up in the middle of nowhere for an interlude. The surrealism broke the mood and the audience laughed at it, not with it. The rest of the movie arouses empathy for the characters as it juxtaposes a flood of everyday practical problems against the larger problems of family and self that the characters face.

"Saving Neta" (2016) is an Israeli film that describes the story of one man through the story of the four women he meets during the film. These women each in her turn change the story of Netta and influence him. "Saving Neta" is an interesting film in terms of Bechdel test, since it is a film that very easily, without trying to "think" about it too much, to process it or emphasize it, passes the test in the first few minutes. As such, it is one of the few (if any) Israeli films that I can think of that "solves" the problem so easily and in fact does not treat it as a problem at all but rather as a self-evident norm. It is also probably one of the few Israeli films where the ratio between the number of actors and the number of actresses playing in it plays a significant difference in favor of the second. The film focuses on women and women's relationships with one another. Mothers and daughters, spouses and sisters, lovers, etc. The film opens in its first few minutes in a conversation between three women who do not deal with a man but with the daily plans of those women and it is full of such conversations. It seems that the women of "saving Netta" are busy all the time. The talks between them are about a military course, car repairs, a family picnic, mourning and pregnancy. They are constantly active and need to function in their relationship with each other or in the role that the society has set for them (a military commander or a woman in a lesbian relationship who is chosen to bear the children). In contrast, Neta is a wanderer, Between the various episodes in the film, he does not do anything other than "flow" and mourn lost connections. In this sense, the film's script gives more freedom to its masculine character than to the female characters who are always committed to something or to someone. All the female characters try to fight the commitments that the society or those around them have imposed on them and fail again and again. The "successful" women, in the film's last story, is a woman who insists on having her retarded sister put in an institution after the death of their mother and provokes anger and rejection from the viewers. This is probably the strong statement of the film and not the private story of Neta himself.

This was an interesting film. The way it transitions into different parts of the story was confusing at first, but in hindsight it was very straightforward.

There's a lot of sadness here. It's as if the director and writer wanted to portray a few everyday stories that just so happen to be unknowingly linked. Everyday stories that take place in the privacy of our lives, the parts we don't often share. Now that I think about it, this is quite the slice of life. None of that happy-go-lucky nonsense.

The segment that hit me the most is the darkest part of the plot. This becomes clear in a particular scene where one of the characters lets out her frustration very realistically. Though the method chosen was unkind to say the least, I found it very understandable. That scene along with the one in which she opens up about her past removes all doubt about where exactly the segment is headed. And even still, I can painfully understand. The dark segment deserves quite the discussion on its own.

Now, a certain someone did something emotionally dirty that I'm still not forgiving her for. Maybe she had a good reason. Maybe she just needed to test things out. Regardless, it was so wrong to me. And if you think it wasn't that bad, think about what it led to.

Other things that I enjoyed:

1) The banter between the children during one of the segments.

2) The animals.

3) The relationship between the sisters... in a slightly depressing and mostly self-tormenting way.

4) The performance at the end.

5) The revelation at the end being a closure inducing surprise.

6) The touching presence during the end scene.