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IMDbPro

Une histoire d'amour et de ténèbres

Original title: A Tale of Love and Darkness
  • 2015
  • PG-13
  • 1h 35m
IMDb RATING
6.0/10
4.5K
YOUR RATING
Natalie Portman in Une histoire d'amour et de ténèbres (2015)
Trailer for A Tale Of Love And Darkness
Play trailer1:47
8 Videos
99+ Photos
BiographyDramaHistoryMysteryRomanceWar

The story of Amos Oz's youth, set against the backdrop of the end of the British Mandate for Palestine and the early years of the State of Israel. The film details the young man's relationsh... Read allThe story of Amos Oz's youth, set against the backdrop of the end of the British Mandate for Palestine and the early years of the State of Israel. The film details the young man's relationship with his mother and his beginnings as a writer, while looking at what happens when the ... Read allThe story of Amos Oz's youth, set against the backdrop of the end of the British Mandate for Palestine and the early years of the State of Israel. The film details the young man's relationship with his mother and his beginnings as a writer, while looking at what happens when the stories we tell become the stories we live.

  • Director
    • Natalie Portman
  • Writers
    • Natalie Portman
    • Amos Oz
  • Stars
    • Natalie Portman
    • Gilad Kahana
    • Amir Tessler
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • IMDb RATING
    6.0/10
    4.5K
    YOUR RATING
    • Director
      • Natalie Portman
    • Writers
      • Natalie Portman
      • Amos Oz
    • Stars
      • Natalie Portman
      • Gilad Kahana
      • Amir Tessler
    • 33User reviews
    • 65Critic reviews
    • 55Metascore
  • See production info at IMDbPro
    • Awards
      • 2 nominations total

    Videos8

    A Tale of Love and Darkness
    Trailer 1:47
    A Tale of Love and Darkness
    A TALE OF LOVE AND DARKNESS - Official Trailer
    Trailer 1:54
    A TALE OF LOVE AND DARKNESS - Official Trailer
    A TALE OF LOVE AND DARKNESS - Official Trailer
    Trailer 1:54
    A TALE OF LOVE AND DARKNESS - Official Trailer
    Family Toast
    Clip 0:56
    Family Toast
    Be Kind
    Clip 0:35
    Be Kind
    Monks Story
    Clip 1:52
    Monks Story
    A Tale Of Love And Darkness: Monk's Story (US)
    Clip 1:52
    A Tale Of Love And Darkness: Monk's Story (US)

    Photos157

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    Top cast61

    Edit
    Natalie Portman
    Natalie Portman
    • Fania
    Gilad Kahana
    Gilad Kahana
    • Arieh
    Amir Tessler
    Amir Tessler
    • Amos
    Moni Moshonov
    Moni Moshonov
    • Old Amos
    • (voice)
    Ohad Knoller
    Ohad Knoller
    • Israel Zarchi
    Makram Khoury
    Makram Khoury
    • Al Hilwani
    • (as Makram J. Khoury)
    Neta Riskin
    Neta Riskin
    • Haya
    Alexander Peleg
    Alexander Peleg
    • Old Amos
    • (as Alex Peleg)
    Rotem Keinan
    Rotem Keinan
    • Tsvi
    Tomer Capone
    Tomer Capone
    • The Pioneer
    • (as Tomer Kapon)
    Yonatan Shiray
    Yonatan Shiray
    • Teenage Amos
    Vladimir Friedman
    Vladimir Friedman
    • Mr. Licht
    Henry David
    Henry David
    • Colonel Jan
    Dina Doron
    Dina Doron
    • Grandma Klausner
    • (as Dina Doronne)
    Yitzhak Peker
    • Grandpa Klausner
    • (as Itzhak Peker)
    Dima Ross
    Dima Ross
    • Pharmacist
    Bar Sade
    Bar Sade
    • Sonia
    Jana Fridman
    Jana Fridman
    • Grandma Mussman
    • Director
      • Natalie Portman
    • Writers
      • Natalie Portman
      • Amos Oz
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

    User reviews33

    6.04.5K
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    Featured reviews

    7paul-allaer

    Natalie Portman's directing debut shows promise for more

    "A Tale of Love and Darkness" (2015 release from Israel; 98 min.) brings the story of Amos Oz. As the movie opens, we see young Amos and his mom, who is telling bedtime stories. We are informed on the screen that it is "Jerusalem, 1945, under British Mandate"> Amos and his parents are trying to build a life , unsure of what is to come. "There is enough room in this land for two peoples", comments young Amos when he meets a young Arab girl at a social gathering. Meanwhile, Amos' mom is starting to deal with with migraines. To tell you more would spoil your viewing experience, you'll just have to see for yourself how it all plays out.

    Couple of comments: to state that this movie is a labor of love for Natalie Portman would be the understatement of the year. Not only did she write the script (based on the memoir of Amos Oz), she also stars (as Amos' mom), produces and directs. Yes, this is the directing debut of the talented actress, and it shows quite a bit of promise. The movie brings a good mix of what it was like to be in Jerusalem during 1945-1948, and what the O family endured in particular. The movie also serves as a coming-of-age tale for the young Amos, an only child surrounded by loving parents and family,I suppose that Portman could've easily decided to produce the movie in English, but instead she retained the Hebrew language (and being Jewish herself, already spoke some Hebrew but reportedly took significant language lessons so as to portray this role in pretty much impeccable Hebrew). Beware: if you think this is an 'action' movie (due to the 1948 war), you might be wrong. This is a slow-moving film (in the best possible way), focusing on the Oz family and their surroundings.

    "a Tale of Love and Darkness" debuted at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival to positive acclaim. Why it's take this long to reach US audiences, I have no idea but better late than never I suppose. The movie finally opened at my local art-house theater this weekend, and the Saturday early evening screening where I saw this at turned out to be a semi-private screening: there was only 1 other person in the theater. That is unfortunate, and I can only hope that as the movie becomes available on Amazon Instant Video and later on DVD/Blu-ray, it will find a larger audience, which by all means it deserves. I can't wait what Portman the director will do next. Meanwhile, if you are in the mood for an intriguing foreign film about a family in the middle of Israel's birth of a nation, I would readily recommend "A Tale of Love and Darkness".
    9howard.schumann

    Beautiful and poetic

    In a quiet moment in Natalie Portman's ("Knight of Cups") beautiful and poetic A Tale of Love and Darkness, a mother says to her young son "If you have to choose between telling a lie or insulting someone, choose to be generous." When the boy asks her whether or not it is alright to lie, she replies, "Sometimes... yes. It's better to be sensitive than to be honest." It is an important lesson, one I wish I had learned earlier in my life. Written and directed by Portman, who also stars as Fania, Amos' (Amir Tessler) troubled mother, the film is based on the memoir of Israeli novelist and journalist Amos Oz and is set in Jerusalem in the critical period before the transition from the British mandate in Palestine to the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 following the Arab-Israeli War.

    Opening in 1945 after the Klausner's escape from the desecration of a once vibrant culture in Eastern Europe, it is the story of the early influences in Oz's life that propelled him to become a famous writer. As narrated by Moni Moshonov and told from the viewpoint of the older Amos Oz recollecting his past, the film attempts to probe the depths of a family whose dream of a land of milk and honey becomes darker as it progresses, telling us that the worst thing that can happen to a dream is that it is fulfilled. Amos' father Arieh (Gilad Kahana, "The Man in the Wall") is a librarian who has just published is first novel and desperately wants to achieve the success of his own father, historian Joseph Klausner. Though he does not succeed, he never stops being thankful for Israel, telling his son, "You'll be bullied in school, but not because you're Jewish." We learn early in the film that Amos' mother Fania blames herself for leaving behind a life of wealth. It is a self-inflicted wound exacerbated by her own mother's verbal cruelty, one that is manifested by insomnia, migraine headaches, and a long struggle with depression that ended with her suicide at the young age of 38. Fania is a story teller whose stories, fables, and tales of far-away lands continue to enrich Amos' life and Amos himself begins to tell stories to keep bullies from attacking him at school. The humble Amos denies that he is sensitive, saying he wants to be a farmer or a dog murderer and goes to work on a kibbutz, but the sensitive can do nothing about who they are but only attempt to share it and make it real for others.

    Amos' story is depicted in the context of the short-lived joy after the U.N.'s vote to partition Palestine and the Arab attacks on Jerusalem that killed many of the family's friends and neighbors. Their home becomes a shelter for those fleeing the Arab bombs and the real consequences of Zionism and the ideal of statehood become apparent, a society caught between memories of the holocaust and fears that it will happen again. As Fania's growing depression and her drift from reality dominates the landscape, the film loses a measure of dramatic impact, yet it remains compelling and literate, attesting to the way the promise of Israel has been shattered by strident voices fighting centuries-old struggles for domination.

    A Tale of Love and Darkness is an intimate film, a film of memory, one told in incidents and flashbacks. Like a film of Terence Malick, it talks in whispers, a language that exists only in the soul. There is little plot to describe, only moods and gestures. Fania's death is the film's central theme and it remains a mystery, buried in the enigma of a woman who has forgotten how to dream, yet it is transcended by the death of the dream of two vibrant cultures living together in peace and brotherhood. Early in the film, Amos is on his best behavior at a party in the home of a Palestinian neighbor. When he meets an Arab girl who can speak Hebrew, there is an immediate connection and he tells her that "there is room for two peoples in this land," but the dream ends suddenly when Amos, playing at being Tarzan, falls from a tree when the chains of a swing break injuring a little girl and the sudden chasm between the two cultures becomes a sad portent of the future.
    6ferguson-6

    tell me a story

    Greetings again from the darkness. The establishment of the state of Israel and the memoir of Amos Oz are the foundation of the feature film directorial debut of Natalie Portman. First time directors don't typically fight over such source material, but it has always seemed that Ms. Portman was headed towards bigger (and more important) things.

    She was born in Jerusalem and this story opens in that city during 1945. The narrator is the elderly Amos and the story is told through the eyes of young Amos (a very effective Amir Tessler) … though the focus is on his mother Fania (played by Ms. Portman).

    The tensions between Jews and Arabs are ever-present, but this is the mostly personal and intimate struggle of Fania and her family. She has survived the atrocities of the Holocaust, though many of her family and friends did not. In fact, her inability to overcome this past and adjust to the new world is what has the biggest impact on young Amos and his scholarly father Arieh (Gilad Kahana). Amos soon figures out that the litmus test for his mother's mood is whether she is telling stories of the old days, or staring blankly into a void.

    Watching someone fade away and experience death by depression/disappointment/unfulfilled dreams goes so against what we typically see on screen – the emotionally strong and heroic types. Portman's performance makes it believable, but no less difficult to watch … for us or young Amos.

    The film is well shot and well acted, and much more is conveyed through faces and movement than spoken words … somewhat unusual for the recollections of a writer. The color palette and the silence dominate many scenes, and it seems appropriate given the situation of this family. Expect to see many more projects from director Portman, as she obviously has much to say.
    7Moviegoer19

    A Moving and Artistic Film

    I have not read the book upon which the film was based, so my comments are purely on the film. Maybe fifteen or twenty minutes in I was thinking, okay, what's going on here? Why should I care about this story and these characters? As I continued to watch my caring about the characters and their story increased, until, by the end, I was very moved and cared deeply.

    At some point beyond halfway, I thought the greatest feat here is the creation of mood, not only of the characters but of the whole world presented in the film, and then, transferred to me, by virtue of my watching and listening to it. It's a visual and auditory feast.

    A lot happens in this film, both personally and historically, but ultimately what I was left with was a sense of a man recalling his childhood and the emotion that he carried with him through his life. As other reviewers have indicated, it's a poetic film, and I wound up absorbing it the way I might a poem. And in that way, it worked beautifully.
    4segacs

    A collection of beautiful parts that don't quite add up to a whole

    I wanted to like this. I really did. Natalie Portman's directorial debut taking on an epic Amos Oz novel about his early life set against the tale of the birth of the State of Israel should have been wonderful. Instead, it felt like a series of beautiful cinematic vignettes that didn't quite come together to form a cohesive narrative. The dramatic tension is missing. The motivations of Oz and his mother and father are not explained. A couple of political scenes inserted to give some context -- namely the scene with the Arab girl and her brother, and the scene where the UN vote is being read out -- feel clunky and not well linked to the more personal story being told. If I hadn't come into the movie already having a good grasp of the history of mandatory Palestine and Israel's early years, I feel I would have been totally lost, as so much was glossed over or not really explored. Moreover, the most interesting parts to me were those that explored Amos's relationship with his father, but Portman chose to focus the narrative on his enigmatic, struggling mother -- someone you get the sense that the boy himself never really understood. There are a lot of wonderful scenes here, but they don't really go anywhere. Haval.

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    Storyline

    Edit

    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      The producers wanted the adaptation to be filmed in English but Natalie Portman fought for it to remain in Hebrew, like the book.
    • Quotes

      Old Amos: The only way to keep the dream alive, full of hope and not disappointing is to never try to implement it. A dream brought to life is disappointing. This disappointment is the nature of dreams.

      [last lines]

    • Connections
      Referenced in Vecherniy Urgant: Viacheslav Fetisov/Ladlena Fetisova (2015)
    • Soundtracks
      Opening Music
      Performed by Caitlin Sullivan, Kyle Armbrust

      Composed by Nicholas Britell

      (P) 2015 Voltage Pictures under exclusive license to Milan Entertainment Inc.

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    FAQ19

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    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • September 3, 2015 (Israel)
    • Countries of origin
      • Israel
      • United States
    • Official sites
      • Official site
      • Official site (Japan)
    • Languages
      • Hebrew
      • English
      • Arabic
      • Russian
    • Also known as
      • A Tale of Love and Darkness
    • Filming locations
      • Jerusalem, Israel(location)
    • Production companies
      • Focus World
      • Avi Chai fund
      • Gesher Fund
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Box office

    Edit
    • Budget
      • $4,000,000 (estimated)
    • Gross US & Canada
      • $572,212
    • Opening weekend US & Canada
      • $37,170
      • Aug 21, 2016
    • Gross worldwide
      • $724,885
    See detailed box office info on IMDbPro

    Tech specs

    Edit
    • Runtime
      1 hour 35 minutes
    • Color
      • Color
      • Black and White
    • Aspect ratio
      • 2.35 : 1

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