Movie review: Alila - sensuous,passionate, warm...

Never having watched an Israeli movie, I picked up Alila recently at the library. "Boldly Entertaining" was a blurb on the DVD cover and I did not know what exactly to expect because, as you know, "foreign films" need not be "boldly entertaining" to make an impression :-) -- why, they are often expected to be just different, even shocking, compared to the more staid, formulaic Hollywood fare.

Yet, after watching it, I was quite bowled over by the raw power of the movie and even touched by its humanness, where even something as routine as a family drama,s, as one of its subplot was handled without mush.

The central story, if there is one, has to do with the catty, chic Gabi (the marvellously sexy, sultry Yaël Abecassis) and her tempestuous, steamy, obsessive relationship with her secretive, solidly-built lover Hezi (Amos Lavi) ["I love the smell of your body," Gabi tells him more than once] in an illegally rented flat (procured by Hezi) in a building complex called Alila, where most of the action is played out, where, among others, lives Mali, who happens to be Gabi's close friend. She lives with her lover Illan, and her her ex-husband, Ezra (the brooding, sulking Uri Klauzner) is parked right outside her apartment (he, a builder-contactor of sorts, lives in his van with illegal immigrant Chinese workers). The noisy goings-on between Gabi and Hezi unsettle some of the building's other residents especially one Mr. Schwartz who relives his Holocaust horrors.

But there is no effort to tell any one story here -- merely a montage of individual tales that the director Amos Gitai seems to piece together...but there is something vibrant in the colors and the camerawork, there is a mad allure to Gabi's statuesque bearing and her obsession, there is a solidity and endearing hopelessenss to Ezra's position (and not to mention his humanity in caring for his Chinese workers)...all this combines to make Alila a movie that really springs out at you, full of life...

There is the enchanting scene towards the end when Gabi is finally thinking of shaking herself off her obsession for Hezi and the lights go out in her flat. She calls Ezra to take a look and he comes in and finds that the fuses are blown in her flat. While he is reparing it, Gabi goes out onto the balcony of the building and lets the oncoming rain wet her and she relishes its wetness on her body in a sort of silent communion. Ezra stops by her, explaining, that the fuse wire had grown old, the connection between two ends of the fuse that is needed to keep the electricity flowing had frayed and broken...