Prendre femme

I completely fell in love with Elkabetz's final film Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem. It's such a complete film I didn't realize until much later that it was the final piece in a trilogy, the first being To Take a Wife.

To Take a Wife works much the same way. You don't need to know that it is part of a trilogy, it works very well on its own. Ronit Elkabetz plays Viviane Amsalem. When we meet her she is completely silent, and remains so for a good portion of the running time. Men around her beg and plead with her. It's because Vivane wants a divorce from her husband, and her ultra religious family are appalled and want her to give her husband a chance. The scene ends with Viviane relenting, but the rest of the movie is preoccupied with showing just how bad the Amsalem's marriage is. In Gett, Viviane talked about the torture of their marriage, but it was never seen. In To Take a Wife, we learn just how bad things can get between two people who are completely ill suited to one another.

This is the debut film for Elkabetz and her brother and co-director. Unlike Gett this doesn't rise to the level of full masterpiece but it's an excellent showcase for Ronit nevertheless and her portrayal of Viviane is heartbreaking and feels real and lived-in.

Ronit Elkabetz reigned, very much on her own terms, as a larger-than-life presence during a decade or so of Israeli cinema. Her final and most-acclaimed film, "Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem," was the third in a trilogy that she wrote and directed together with her brother Shlomi. A couple of years after that career peak, she was dead (lung cancer) and her brother cemented her legend in a long documentary - edited twice, into theatrical installments and into TV installments - dwelling largely on the parallels between the couple in the trilogy and her own parents.

A "gett," as in the title of the trilogy's third film, is a Jewish divorce, and so you might expect that the trilogy's first film - "To Take a Wife" - would start the three-movie arc with a love story that is only beginning to show potential problems between the couple. Instead, and perhaps because Elkabetz wasn't around for her own parents' love story, it begins with the marriage already looking ruined. The lead character Viviane and her husband are crowded together with their children (and, apparently, his mother) in a modest Haifa apartment where a corner also serves as her workplace. She's a neighborhood hairdresser, and the couple is living from loan to loan. We have near-zero sense of the Haifa surroundings, as almost the entire film takes place indoors. As in "Gett," the audience can't easily blame one spouse or the other for their obvious incompatibility. Nor does the movie have any great "aha" moments that add depth to the later story of the divorce. What it does offer is tour-de-force acting by Elkabetz; and the mostly quieter work of her foil, Simon Abkarian, doesn't fall short.

Miserable family situations presented with talent and good craftsmanship. As the saying goes: "For people who like this kind of thing, this is the kind of thing you like."

Ronit Elkabetz has a tendency for extravagant characters and in this film portrays yet another. Her loveless marriage in shambles, her old lover back in Israel, she stumbles from one situation to the next as if under no power of her own. Her husband, her children, her neighbors, her lover -- they all seem more like obstacles in her path toward self-actualization than characters she feels anything for.

The narrative is awkward and confused, the characters seem to lack any particular drive, but it still all kind of pulls together because of the emotional immediacy created by explosive bursts from various characters well-captured by the camera in close-up.

While I can't say I thought it was a very good film, it's definitely interesting. If Shlomi and Ronit Elkabetz can tighten up their storytelling, their next work should be truly unique.