The power of a woman

[JohnLocke]

The power of a woman
By Yitzhak Laor -- Haaretz
Friday, March 24, 2006
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"Close to Home," a film. Screenplay and direction: Vidi Bilu, Dalia Hager; cinematography: Yaron Sharaf; editing: Joelle Alexis; cast: Smadar Sayar, Naama Schendar, Ami Weinberg, Anna Stefan, Irit Suki

What is the "cinematic"? This is the question the director asks herself/himself, from our perspective, about the nature of the artistic medium: What in the world (that she/he wants to represent) - is cinematic? There are filmmakers who do not answer this at all. The cinematic, as they see it, is the filming of a screenplay; they go back to "the same story," a version faithful to the eternal tale of "Daddy-Mommy-me." Alas, in this story the woman is always the function of a man (husband-lover-father). Possibly the cinema could turn its back on the realistic story, but because of its increasing dependence on the screenplay (because of the way films get funded: functionaries, committees and investors want to know what will be there, what the "story" is before the film is born) - because of this dependence on something that is not cinematic, the cinematic question revolves around the nature of the story. And in a story, we must find "ourselves," equipped with a dose of narcissism, love of the self, that is to say for the self on the screen, the representative of the good and the beautiful. There is no actual cinema without the sweet falling in love with the angel faces on the screen. And altogether, if pretty women are a function of men in a story at the center of which there is an oedipal triangle, is there a female story that is not clearly the prisoner of this story?

"Close to Home" is a film about the possibility of evading this grip. Well beyond the liberal feminism that sees a woman who has completed the air force pilots' training course as a female achievement, in this film there is a more profound understanding of the "female condition." This is a film about the ability to evade the male grasp of the order of things.
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