The film opens with Batya (Sarah Adler) and a young man standing in front of a blue sky. The man asks if there's anything she wants to say, something as simple as "Stay." But Batya says nothing. The man leaves and the blue sky (which was actually painted on the side of the moving van) takes off with him. After a moment's pause, Batya cries out, "Stay." This proves a good introduction to the characters of Jellyfish . They are women at crossroads in need of making decisions but feeling somewhat ambivalent about their choices.
There's also a new bride (Noa Knoller) who accidentally locks herself in a bathroom stall and breaks her leg climbing out. This prompts a change in honeymoon plans, forcing the newlyweds to give up a Caribbean vacation for one closer to home. There's also a Filipino home-care worker (Ma-nenita De Latorre) whose first client drops dead on her and her second proves a bit prickly. And Batya's life is suddenly complicated by a mysterious and mute little girl who emerges from the sea. On the periphery of these women are a wedding photographer who's just been fired, an actress who's playing Hamlet and dealing with her ailing mother, and a writer staying at the same hotel as the newlyweds and causing jealousy for the new bride.
The injured bride in Jellyfish (Zeitgeist Films)
Jellyfish marks the feature film debut of the husband and wife team of writer/director Shira Geffen and co-director Etgar Keret (who's also an acclaimed author). Their collaboration finds humor in visual composition in a style similar to another recent French-Israeli film The Band's Visit . But Jellyfish only relies on these kinds of visual gags occasionally and usually it's to point out the distance between reality and something more idealized. So a lovely shot of waterfalls turns out to be one of those cheesy, backlit pictures where the water glistens. The image, like the painted sky of the first shot, is presented as something both unattainable and artificially altered to look more enticing. There's also the humorous incongruity of Batya being forced to wear a cheap plastic princess tiara as she waits tables at weddings.
But unlike The Band's Visit, Jellyfish takes off on occasional flights of fancy. The little girl from the beach might be a mermaid, if you are willing to let go of your tight grasp on reality. She's a mysterious creature who always seems wet and refuses to remove her bright red and white inflatable donut tube. In fact water is a recurring visual theme that seems both ominous and symbolic of rebirth. The sea itself becomes a character offering hope as well. Another flight of fancy involves home movies. A stranger's old home movie provides a magical experience for Batya who claims to have no pictures or home movies of her own. And even the new bride surprises us with the fantastical. Although she initially seems to have little artistic skill, she manages to sit down and write a lovely and vividly imaginative poem that serves a very unintended but sweetly sad purpose.
What's refreshing about Jellyfish is that not everything ties up neatly together. The characters' lives touch and occasionally overlap but not with the heavy manipulation or obvious intent of say a film like Crash . At one point the photographer questions Batya's desire to watch someone else's home movies because the films "have no plot development." And in a sense, Jellyfish has very little conventional linear plot development. Instead, it spins a sometimes surreal experience about a group of women each coming to terms with something in their lives. Geffen and Keret have created a cinematic poem rather than a conventional narrative film.
The caretaker and her parient in Jellyfish (Zeitgeist Films)
Batya recalls a pivotal moment in her life when as a child her parents said she couldn't buy ice cream but to be patient because the ice cream man would return. In a sense, poor Batya has been waiting her whole life for that ice cream man to come back. His failure to return sums up her disillusionment and her lack of trust in anyone, not just her unreliable parents. This sense of waiting for something permeates the film and in the end there is a sense of fulfillment. Like the jellyfish of the title, these characters are at the mercy of the currents and tides and seem incapable of controlling their own fates. But in the end, each woman comes to feel a little more certain of who she is and what she might be able to get from life. This isn't a story about empowerment on a grand scale but rather on a very small one.
Jellyfish (unrated and in Hebrew with English subtitles) may feel too slight and directionless for some, but if you want a delicately crafted, sweetly sad and passionately felt film, then Jellyfish is the perfect film.
Companion viewing: The Band's Visit, The Taste of Others, I've Heard the Mermaids Singing, and maybe something by Eric Rohmer or with Buster Keaton
