home
| art & architecture | books & cds | dance
| destinations | film | opera | television | theater | archives
Nina's Tragedies is an uneasy mix of farce and
family drama that offers some genuinely funny and some sweetly touching moments, but it
never comes together as a coherent whole.
Despite the title, the film is more about the coming of age of
adolescent Nadav (Aviv Elkabets) and his relationships with the rest of his family. Nadav
keeps a journal which provides both the basis for an overused voiceover and a plot element
as well. Nadav's parents have divorced. His father, Amnon (Shmil Ben-Ari), retreats into
the religious life of the Hasidim and neglects his son; in turn, Nadav cuts off his
father. When Amnon comes down with a terminal illness, the ultimate reconciliation is as
predictable as night following day, a weakness in the film partially offset by a poignant
message from father to son as well as some very funny hospital jokes about smoking.
Nadav's mother, Alona (Anat Waxman), is a fashion designer (a source of
some amusing satire) who has a series of men (none of whom register in the film) in
and out of her bed. But it is her younger sister, Nadav's aunt, Nina (Ayelet July Zurer),
that Nadav adores. When Nina's husband is killed in a terrorist attack, Nadav moves into
her apartment to provide companionship during her mourning. But Nina is quickly caught up
with a photographer, Avinoam (Alon Aboutboul) and Nadav once again feels abandoned.
There's a thoroughly superfluous subplot involving Nadav's friend, Menahem,
an unlikely liaison who seems to share only Nadav's proclivities for peeping, itself a
strange side of the film that strikes a wrong note. Menahem has a romance of his own, but
neither he nor his Russian paramour are developed enough to be of interest. Nor is the
character who is prone to walking through the streets of Tel Aviv naked, used primarily as
a bit of uninteresting quirkiness and as a forced plot device. The same might be said of
one of Nadav's teachers whose face has been disfigured as a result of an African mosquito
bite--maybe there's a cultural gulf here between Israeli and American humor.
Writer/director Savi Gabizon weaves back and forth in time, not always
with complete clarity, and he give very little sense of place. Aside from a scene with the
Hassids dancing in the street, the location could be most anywhere.
Were the pivotal character of Nadav more interesting, the film might
have knit together more tightly. But Nadav, despite being the narrator, is mostly a
reactive character, responding to what happens to him in obvious ways. There's neither
depth nor originality in the conception of the character.
The ensemble of performers offer considerable charm and manage to
inject some flavor into a heavily plot-driven scenario. In the end, though, the comedy is
feather-light and the emotions are drawn on situation, rather than on genuine involvement
with substantively developed characters.
- Arthur Lazere
