Israeli film embraces cultural difference
THE film Noodle is a sophisticated and satisfying Israeli drama, which blends both modern and traditional Israeli stories, writes film reviewer Don Perlgut.
Film review of Noodle by Don Perlgut
THE film Noodle is a sophisticated and satisfying Israeli drama, which blends both modern and traditional Israeli stories.
The film is set against the background of the almost overnight transformation of Israel into a country with some hundreds of thousands of illegal foreign workers, many of them from Asia (who ever would have thought?).
In the film, a twice-widowed El Al flight attendant Miri (Mili Avital) arrives back at her flat to find her Chinese cleaning woman racing out for “just one hour” and leaving her six-year-old son in her care.
But the cleaning woman never returns.
Noodle builds on the constant sense of loss and grief that pervades Israel, given not only the history of the Holocaust, but the ghosts of those who have fallen in Israel’s many wars.
In this instance, Miri has lost two husbands in Israel’s wars, one a pilot and one a soldier, and is suffering from serious undiagnosed depression as a result.
The film’s writer and director, Ayelet Menahemi, based the character of Miri on a woman she met named Etti, whose two husbands died in the 1967 and 1973 wars and who is an El Al attendant.
Miri lives with her sister Gila (Anat Waxman) and niece, not far from her sister’s now-separated husband Izzi (Alon Aboutboul).
Miri has a bitchy, love-hate relationship with her sister, and her response to having to care for the young Chinese boy who speaks no Hebrew other than “I am a Chinese boy” is one of incredulity followed by an increasing determination to do the right thing.
Eventually this means attempting to track down the boy’s mother, who they suspected was deported for illegal immigration. But what to do with the boy?
Hand him over to the police or social services, or attempt to solve this crisis with the help of friends, including the ever-helpful Izzi and Matty Guetta (Iftach Klein), an old friend and travel writer who conveniently also speaks Chinese.
At first glance, Noodle (so named, because the Israelis give this nickname to the Chinese boy) appears that it could be a thin drama about a needy and depressed childless woman finding fulfilment by becoming a surrogate mother.
Although there is a touch of that in the script, writer/director Menahemi goes much further, bringing an unusual depth to the story, opening it up in ways (including filming in China) that give it universal themes of reconciliation and facing one’s demons and placing it firmly in the 21st century of globalised Israel.
Although the script is satisfying (and particularly so in how it deals kindly and gently with the romantic needs of the four main adult characters in the film), Noodle achieves its success especially through a very strong cast.
Avital, one of Israel’s current acting stars with screen success on both sides of the Atlantic, brings a great presence to the film.
Waxman, who won an Israeli Academy Award for her role, is suitably churlish and absolutely convincing as the gruff sister. Aboutboul neatly plays a hard role — the sensitive Israeli man trying to articulate his feelings.
But the real star of the film, without which Noodle simply would not have worked, is Baoqi Chen — a young Chinese actor from Shanghai. Despite starring in his first film, he convincingly displays anger, frustration, joy, sadness and elation.
The moments when his character is happy on screen are truly magical. He was reportedly much beloved on the set of this film and watching you can see why.
Lest we think that Americans have such a hold on top child actors, this young Chinese boy -— incongruously appearing in an Israeli film — gives one of the best child acting performances in recent years.
Noodle is currently screening in Melbourne and opens in Sydney on July 2 at selected cinemas.
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