Listonixio Fresh and Exciting

Cleveronix A different way of telling a story

Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Numerootno A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

crosslit-34001 The female heart is shared through four, perhaps five female roles, and a token male. I say token because, perhaps like in the lives of all women as they compete with one another yet strive mutually for acceptance, men can often be little more than an accessory. Here the hopes, pains, and disappointments of wives, mothers, daughters, and career women are shared in a very poetic and imaginative way. Wonderful cinemoatography. The use of setting is especially effective.

johnderek only if its the last thing yo do and your humour is evaporated should you ever attempt to watch this. If you do, watch it alone invite no one, they will never return to watch another movie with you. It might be an excellent tool for that very purpose, invite people you want to get rid of in your life.Apparently I need to write more about his film in order to qualify as a review. This is sweet irony for this film it really does sum it up perfectly. after wasting my time it wastes more of your time. IT does have a function I take it all back.I recommend this film, watch it, its provocative, really go ahead watch it.

gradyharp There are an increasingly impressive number of films coming from Israel and MEDUZOT (JELLYFISH) is one of the more creative works of cinematic art in that rich catalogue. Shira Geffen (who also wrote the screenplay) and Etgar Keret collaborated on this seemingly small film and from a few threads of separate and disparate characterizations have woven a fascinating and deeply touching montage of the lives of several people whose destinies curiously intersect. The manner in which the film is presented is a graceful mixture of naturalism and fantasy and the directors know just how to combine the two approaches to maximum effect. The film opens in Tel Aviv at a routine wedding reception where untidy Batya (Sarah Adler) works as a waitress, her life being recently shaken by the dissolution of her relationship. At this noisy and gaudy reception we also notice the bride Keren (Noa Knoller) who encounters an accident in the washroom that results in a broken leg requiring a cast and preventing her from a planned honeymoon (her new husband Michael - Gera Sandler - finds instead a hotel on the noisy boulevard which is less than romantic), and Joy (Ma-nenita De Latorre), a Filipino caregiver for older unwanted women who works to send support to her young son in the Philippines, and a young female photographer who captures it all on film. The owner of the catering business fires Batya and the photographer and the two share living space. While musing on the beach Batya finds a strange young mute girl (Nicol Leidman) wearing a circular floating device and when Batya cannot find the girl's parents she resorts to police help - a turn which only places Batya as custodian of the strange child. Meanwhile Keren and Michael begin their disastrous honeymoon in the noisy hotel, discovering that the quiet top floor suite is occupied by a single woman poet whom Michael meets and eventually requests they trade rooms, a decision that leads to strange circumstances that affect all three people. And during this time Joy is passed among several older women, ending up with a cranky mother of an actress who speaks only Hebrew and German and takes her time growing into the kindness Joy offers her. Small incidents continue to occur, incidents that bind these people together in mysterious ways, some happy, some sad. And while the characters of this tapestry are very realistically drawn, there are moments of magical realism that embroider their lives with a glowing sense of fantasy - moments that address the topics of childhood memories, core needs, death, and that universal need to connect to others. This is a delicate work of crocheted art that remains in the mind long after the credits of this gifted cast and production crew complete the film. In Hebrew with English subtitles. Grady Harp

wondercritic I went to see this because I'd never seen Tel-Aviv, where the story is set. I was disappointed, since it doesn't offer many views of Israel's largest metropolis. It's also pretentious—one of those movies that leaves you guessing at its meaning until you ultimately give up with a shrug of the shoulders.The main protagonist is Batya, a woman in her twenties' who works as a waitress at catered weddings. Her parents evidently don't care about her very much, and when a little girl walks out of the sea with an inflatable ring around her, Batya feels compelled to take care of her. The little girl doesn't speak, and Batya can't give her to social services because it's the weekend and the agency is closed. So she takes her back to her apartment with the leaky roof, and when it comes time to work in the evening, she has to take the little girl with her. The boss is very unhappy about this and other shortcomings in Batya's work performance.Another main character is Keren, who is getting married. At her wedding party (where Batya is of course working), she breaks her leg climbing out of a ladies' room cubicle whose door won't open, and so she and her new husband cannot take the Caribbean vacation they've planned. They end up in a dingy hotel on the seafront without a view. It smells bad, there is noise from the traffic, and Keren is complaining all the time. Her husband meets a strangely attractive older woman – a writer – who is also staying in the hotel, and Keren worries that he has slept with this stranger.The third main character is a Filipino woman named Joy who looks after old people. The old woman she is hired to care for is very crabby and speaks no English, only German and Hebrew. Joy speaks English but no Hebrew or German. Joy is mostly concerned with how her son is doing back in the Philippines, and wants to buy him a toy boat, as he has asked. She finds the perfect boat in a store and plans to buy it. The daughter of the old woman, who hired Joy, is an actress appearing in some sort of post-modern "physical theater" adaptation of Hamlet, and does not get along with her mother.The way in which these three stories—which intersect momentarily—resolve themselves is presumably supposed to mean something profound. I didn't get it. There is a fantasy element to Batya's relationship with the little girl, and maybe Batya's non-existent relationship with her parents is somehow inverted in this relationship. When Joy sees the toy boat in the shop window, there is a strange effect used where the little sails billow as if blown by the wind, and they do this as if they are on the scale of a real-life ship. Keren draws the outline of a bottle around a ship that is on a brochure cover in the hotel room, and a narration of the strange woman's poetry mentions a ship in a bottle. But what does all this mean? I thought about it for a while and realized I wasn't going to lose any sleep in the process. If anyone out there has a clear idea of what it's all about, maybe they can fill me in.