REVIEW: Jellyfish (Meduzot)
Deserving winners of the prestigious Camera d’Or for best debut feature at Cannes last year, husband and wife team Etgar Keret and Shira Geffen skilfully intertwine several narrative lines as they offer us a window into the lives of some of the residents of Tel-Aviv.
Particularly outstanding are Sarah Adler as Batia, a recently heart-broken female who finds redemption in the form of a mysterious mute girl that emerges from the sea, and Ma-nenita De Latorre as Joy, a non-Hebrew speaking Philippine care-attendant struggling to communicate both with her elderly charges and her son back home.
The film exposes the absurdity of the central existential conceit that we are in charge of our own destinies, suggesting instead we are always at the whim of chance, and chance, more often than not, is cruel.
While without question a dark film, Jellyfish also celebrates the small moments of tenderness we offer to each other and the unexpected happy twists of fate that human hope allows the possibility for.
- Aidan McGuil
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