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."
