The women have a bone to pick with a new rabbi in Emil Ben-Shimon’s The Women’s Balcony
THE WOMEN’S BALCONY (Emil Ben-Shimon, 2016)
Lincoln Plaza Cinema, 1886 Broadway at 63rd St., 212-757-2280
Quad Cinema, 34 West 13th St., 212-255-2243
Opens Friday, May 26
www.menemshafilms.com
Judaism may be matrilineal, but that doesn’t mean that women are treated as equal to men, especially among sects espousing fundamentalist religious beliefs, although women are considered holier than men in Orthodox communities. In Emil Ben-Shimon’s absolutely wonderful debut feature, The Women’s Balcony, that all comes to a head when wives, mothers, girlfriends, and daughters, relegated to a balcony in the back of a small, local shul — as if on a pedestal, farther away from the Torah but closer to G-d — come crashing down when the structure breaks, suddenly putting them on the same level as the men. It’s no coincidence that this happens during an Orthodox bar mitzvah, when a boy becomes a man, which is much different from an orthodox bat mitzvah, when a girl becomes a woman. When a fundamentalist rabbi from a nearby congregation offers to help rebuild the Mizrahi synagogue, the place of women in the shul are far from his main concern, leading to a furious and delightful battle of the sexes. With the elderly Rabbi Menashe (Abraham Celektar) flustered because the accident has left his wife in a coma, Rabbi David (Avraham Aviv Alush) is only too happy to step in, demanding further separation between the men and the women, which causes problems for such couples as gabbai Aharon (Itzik Cohen) and Tikva (Orna Banai); mild-mannered Nissan (Herzi Tobey) and Margalit (Einat Sarouf); and warmhearted shopkeeper Zion (Igal Naor) and Etti (Evelin Hagoel), who have a terrific marriage and equal partnership until things start changing at the shul. Meanwhile, everyone is hoping that Yaffa (Yafit Asulin) finds the right man as she expands her dating search, until she and Rabbi David’s assistant (Assaf Ben Shimon) take an interest in each other, a potential Romeo and Juliet romance.
Not even the Passover seder can bring order to the chaos surrounding the reconstruction of a synagogue in The Women’s Balcony
The Women’s Balcony was written by first-time screenwriter Shlomit Nehama, Ben-Shimon’s ex-wife, who was inspired by the religious extremism she saw in an Israeli neighborhood where she had once lived. The film evokes such sweet-natured favorites as Local Hero and Waking Ned Devine as well as Aristophanes’s Lysistrata as the women fight for their rights. Ben-Shimon (Mimon, Wild Horses) maintains an infectious pace throughout, as cinematographer Ziv Berkovich puts the audience right in the middle of the action, accompanied by Ahuva Ozeri and Shaul Besser’s playful, Jewish-flavored score. Naor and Hagoel are outstanding as Zion and Etti, the emotional center of the film, a lovely couple with a bright view of life, at least until exclusion and sexism get in the way. Asulin is excellent as Yaffa, the young woman who is part of the next generation of Judaism — and who is not extremely knowledgeable about her religion. But even when situations are at their most tense, Nehama and Ben-Shimon keep it all lighthearted; if only more religious (and marital) disputes could be handled with such grace and wit. Nominated for five Israeli Academy Awards, including Banai for Best Supporting Actress, Rona Doron for Best Costume Design, Vered Mevorach for Best Makeup, the late Ozeri (who passed away recently at the age of sixty-eight) and Besser for Best Score, and Alush for Best Supporting Actor, The Women’s Balcony opens May 26 at Lincoln Plaza and the Quad.
In his final film, Polish master Andrzej Wajda makes a grand statement about the importance of art and its place in society. Afterimage, which was the opening-night selection of the thirteenth New York Polish Film Festival earlier this month, is based on a true story while also serving as a stern warning. Bogusław Linda, who has previously appeared in Wajda’s Man of Iron and Danton, gives a towering performance as real-life Polish avant-garde artist Władysław Strzemiński, a one-armed, one-legged painter considered one of the greatest Polish artists and theoreticians of the twentieth century but whose legacy was destroyed during the rise of Stalinism and social realism. The film begins with a bright, gleeful scene in which Professor Strzemiński and his students roll around a lush green field, smiling and laughing and loving life. Hanna (Zofia Wichłacz) arrives, wanting to study with the professor as well. “The image has to be what you absorb from this,” he tells her, pointing at the beautiful landscape while his students listen with rapt attention. “When we gaze at an object, we get its reflection in our eye. When we stop looking at it and move our gaze elsewhere, an afterimage of the object remains in the eye — a trace of the object with the same shape but the opposite color. An afterimage. Afterimages are the colors, the inside of the eye which looks at an object. Because a person really only sees what he is aware of.” He then gazes out with a big grin and closes his eyes — and Wajda cuts to him in his apartment in 1948, with the Polish United Workers’ Party now in charge; cinematographer Paweł Edelman switches to a very different color scheme, primarily dank grays save for the pervasive red of the Communist party. Virtually day by day, Strzemiński has his ability to make art and to teach stripped away a little at a time as the party enforces a strict code of what is permitted and what is not under its regime. “The purpose of art is to improve its truth on reality,” Strzemiński explains, and he has to face a series of disturbing new truths himself, especially when his young daughter, Nika (Bronislawa Zamachowska), whose mother is famous sculptor Katarzyna Kobro (Aleksandra Justa), starts falling in line with Communist ideals.
