Alila directed by Amos Gitai, Israel/ France; 2003, 122 minutes; color; in Hebrew with English subtitles

By Donald H. Harrison

There is a type of story-telling which is not so much about people, as it is about place.  Because the place is where interesting people can come together, this genre is well suited to weekly television series like The Love Boat, Hotel, E.R., General Hospital, the Cheers bar, as well as the current seemingly endless array of television courtrooms and morgues.  Characters move in and out each week, and we see sketches of their lives—not portraits.  Gradually, over a season, our knowledge aggregates about the regulars in the casts of these "place" shows, until we think we really know their characters.

Alila is a movie about a place in Israel; the movie has so many scenes, you may feel you have watched several episodes of a television drama.  But this Israeli  place is not populated by daring pilots, nor pioneering  kibbutzniks, nor by brave advocates for peace, nor the ba'al tshuvah on their spiritual quests.  There are no star-crossed lovers here—no Arabs and Jews, or secular and Orthodox,  trying to be couples, despite all.  This place is a decrepit little apartment building, somewhere under the Ben Gurion Airport flight path, where although people are thrown together, and in one particular case have noisy but loveless sex, they all are desperately lonely.

The people of this nameless complex of one-room apartments hear on their radios and television the Middle East dramas that we read about—the suicide attacks by Palestinians, the military response by Israelis; the rhetoric of the politicians as elections approach—but they pay scant attention.  It is the background noise to their own unpleasant existences, distractions from their own schemes for wealth and revenge.

There is Ezra (Uri Klauzner), the contractor, who is illegally building a new apartment unit in the basement of this old building in a conspiracy with the landlady (Ronit Elkabetz), who wants to eke out some more rent.  His crew consists of Chinese workers, who have stayed in Israel illegally and whose exploited lives are similar to those suffered here in San Diego by Mexican migrants. Ezra has been living in his van ever since his wife Mali  (Hanna Laszlo) threw him out of their equally low-rent apartment.  Mali has taken a younger lover, Ilan,  (Liron Levo) whom she knows will leave her eventually.  Ilan is a neighborhood rental agent, who leases a room where the sullen and furtive Hezi (Amos Lavie) can meet his mistress, Gabi (Yael Abecassis)  who, coincidentally, is a friend of Mali's.

The noise of their trysts—coupled with the incessant construction noise—pushes Mr. Schwartz (Yosef Carmon), a Holocaust survivor, to the near breaking point; while exciting the imagination of  Aviram (Lupo Berkowitch), another bachelor renter who has only his dog for company.  Amid all this, Schwartz's Asian caregiver (Lyn Shiao Zamir) dreams of the life she might have had, symbolized by the music she plays haltingly on a keyboard.  Eyal (Amit Mestachen), the son of Ezra and Mali, meanwhile deserts from the Army, throwing into doubt all his parents' assumptions about love of duty and country.  And, after all, what is this country that one is supposed to love? filmmaker Amos Gitai and his cast seem to demand of us. 

This is a depressing work, and, therefore, most people will not like this film.  The threadbare existences in this dingy little tenement will go on and on.  But long after they've seen the movie, viewers may keep recalling Gitai's point.  Life is not all romance, and neither is Israel.  Out of view, somewhere under the flight path, there are its unpleasant places too. However, don't look for them to serve as settings for television series.