Noticias

My Lovely Sister

Directed by Marco Carmel

Israel, 2011

Grave-digging, the risen dead, a Charon-like figure transporting the recently deceased, and some particularly gothic wallpaper all sound like elements of a horror film.

That it’s not actually Charon on the river Styx en route to Hades, but instead Ben Lulu on a bicycle traversing the streets of Tel Aviv is emblematic of the genre plays at odds with one-another in Marco Carmel’s My Lovely Sister.

Ostensibly a work of magical realism, where anything of the supernatural blends seamlessly with the real world, making the two separable only by our understanding of the difference and not any visual representation, My Lovely Sister is domestic drama first, ghostly narrative second, and coming-of-age comedy third.

In true melodramatic fashion, the plot is a convoluted tangle of names, motivations and connectedness. Rahma (Evelin Hagoel) and Robert (Moshe Ivgy) are unhappily married. The source...

Two more countries, neither of which have ever won the Foreign Film Prize in Hollywood, have announced their finalists lists.

We'll take Norway first since it's less popular with Oscar (5 nominations) and because I stand humbly before you to say I was wrong. My conjecture about what might be submitted -- other than the new Joachim Trier -- was quite wobbly. The three finalists are not the biggies from the Amanda awards but Joachim Trier’s Oslo, August 31st (Oslo, 31. august) which we briefly discussed, Anne Sewitsky’s Happy, Happy (Sykt lykkelig) and Jens Lien’s Sons of Norway (Sønner av Norge). While Trier has the highest international profile, that doesn't always equate with submission choice. Happy Happy is a very frisky marital comedy (I ♥ the trailer) and Sons of Norway is a punk rock coming of age film that even features a cameo from Sex Pistol Johnny Rotten. Neither...