JELLYFISH (MEDUZOT) World Cinema

Co-directed by popular Israeli novelist and short story writer Etgar Keret and his wife, screenwriter Shira Geffen, this entertaining, memorably unsettling film introduces us to three women at a Tel Aviv wedding.

Batiya (Sarah Adler) has lost a boyfriend and works at the wedding in a dead-end waitress job. Joy (Ma-nenita De Latorre), a Filipino domestic, tends to an aged woman while longing to be with her own child, thousands of miles away. And bride Keren (Noa Kneller) breaks her ankle, setting up a tragicomically disastrous honeymoon. Each of the three brings us into their own unique world of missed attempts at communication, stifled longing for family and sudden reversals of fortune.

Keret and Geffen, who won Cannes’ Camera d’Or for their film(which was nominated for 10 Israeli Oscars), establish a deadpan comic tone that is subtly modified with unexpected bolts of pain and magic, in a manner reminiscent of Kieslowski at his best.

Details

Country: Israel

Year: 2007

Directors: Etgar Keret, Shira Geffen

Producers: Amir Harel, Ayelet Kait, Yaël Fogiel, Laetitia Gonzalez

Director of Photography: Antoine Heberle

Editors: Sasha Frankline, François Gedigier

Cast/Featuring: Sarah Adler (Batya), Nikol Leidman (Girl), Gera Sandler (Michael), Noa Knoller (Keren), Ma-nenita De Latorre (Joy)

Running Time (minutes): 78 min

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