MHSeattle, Joel: Venting

At Moishe House Seattle, we are in the thick of interviewing applicants to join us as new members/housemates. It's a time-consuming, laborious process, that I was all ready to vent about in my end-of-April update. But so far it has mostly been a joy, because the applicants are such cool people!

So instead I will vent briefly about this movie I just saw with Masha and Neal at the closing night of Seattle's Jewish Film Festival. HaSodot ("The Secrets") was billed as a powerful love story set in a women's seminary in Tzfat. Having recently seen a string of not-completely-over-the-top Israeli films, including some surprisingly sensitive portrayals of charedi/Orthodox life, I went in expecting, well, something really good.

I have to give the filmmakers credit for trying. In fact, I can't think of what they didn't try. After the Catholic schoolgirl dramedy (but, you know, with Orthodox girls) had morphed into a Nancy Drew mystery-cum-slasher thriller with layers of Kabbalistic magical realism -- not to mention an appalling Jaws rip-off score -- then, by way of full-frontal mikvah erotica, a little SMBD, and classic girl-on-girl soft porn, detouring into Yiddish-theater slapstick complete with klezmer musicians and a tablecloth gag, Neal leaned over to me and said, "Wow, this movie has everything!" Yes, everything but a point.

The Festival wasn't a complete bust, though. The best stuff, actually, was mostly Israeli television programs -- "The Woman From the Bubble," a delightful documentary about an Israeli sign-language interpreter named Lee Dan; and two series, Arab Labor, and Srugim. Now that we have a video projector set up we want to screen these at home, as events, so if anyone is going to be in an Israeli video store anytime soon, we'll pay you a good tip. :)