Myla (Naruna Kaplan de Macedo) and Ronnie (Alon Aboutboul) go on a road trip exploring regret and the past in IS THAT YOU?
IS THAT YOU? (Dani Menkin, 2014)
Cinema Village
22 East 12th St. between University Pl. & Fifth Ave.
Opens Friday, August 26
212-529-6799
www.cinemavillage.com
heyjudeproductions.com
In Dani Menkin’s Is That You?, young film student Myla (Naruna Kaplan de Macedo) is making a documentary, asking strangers what they regret. If she asked me, I might just have told her that I regret having watched Is That You? Nominated for an Israeli Academy Award for Best Picture and winner of Best Indie Film, Dani Menkin’s Is That You? is a convoluted road-trip movie that manipulates its paper-thin plot until almost none of it makes sense. Israeli film, television, and stage favorite Alon Aboutboul (London Has Fallen, The Dark Knight Rises) stars as Ronnie, an outdated analog man in an ever-more-digital world. After losing his job as a projectionist in an Israeli art house, Ronnie heads to the States, determined to find his lost love, Rachel, who he has not seen in nearly forty years. He picks up an old used car (no fancy new styles for him) from his brother, Jacob (Rani Bleier), and sets out on his mission. The lemon soon breaks down, and Ronnie is offered help by Myla, whose film is called The Road Not Taken. Moved by Ronnie’s story, Myla joins him on his journey, taking her brother’s SUV, without permission. As Ronnie and Myla try to track down Rachel, who can’t seem to settle down in one place for very long, they stop along the way so Myla can interview people on the street and in their homes, getting them to share what they would change in their lives if they could. But the hardest person to get to open up is Ronnie himself.
Myla (Naruna Kaplan de Macedo) and Ronnie (Alon Aboutboul) reach another fork in the road in IS THAT YOU?
Is That You? is a narrative mess from the start, as Menkin (39 Pounds of Love, Dolphin Boy) keeps trying to force square pegs into round holes; if a plot development doesn’t quite work, he forges ahead anyway, leaving viewers scratching their head in disbelief. Aboutboul (Out of the Blue, One of Us) is a wonderful actor, but Ronnie is just too dour and withdrawn, too uncommunicative, while Kaplan de Macedo, a real-life documentary filmmaker in her acting debut and a dead ringer for Zooey Deschanel, is fun to watch, although her character is overly quirky. Even the opening credits are a disappointment; Menkin uses the font associated with Woody Allen films, but there’s nothing in Is That You? that shares any of the wit and intelligence in even the Woodman’s lesser works. There are some interesting ideas in the film, but it probably would have worked better as a short instead of an eighty-three-minute feature. Is That You? opens August 26 at Cinema Village, with Menkin, Aboutboul, and other members of the cast and crew participating in several Q&As over the weekend.