In Yom Yom, the second film in Amos Gitai's (Devarim, Kadosh) celebrated City Trilogy, Israel's preeminent writer-director weaves, "a darkly comic taIe of characters driven by divided loyalties and neurotic inhibitions" (ViIIage Voice) in the mixed nationality Mediterranean port city of Haifa. Featuring a top-fIight ensembIe cast, including muItiple lsraeIi Academy Award winner Moshe Ivgy (Munich) and stage legend (and 20's UFA child star) Hanna Meron (M), Yom Yom is a film of unusual wit, grace and insight.
In spite of bIood ties to both Haifa's Jewish and Arab populations, Moshe (lvgy) Ieads a rootIess existence. Grown weary of his impatient wife Didi (Keren Mor) and ambivaIent about his needy young mistress Grisha (NataIi Atiya), the only reIationships Moshe doesn't compIicate are with his devoted parents, Jewish Hanna (Meron) and Arab Yussuf, and with JuIes (Juliano Mer), Moshe's ne'er-do-weII chiIdhood friend. But when Jules' reaI estate deveIoper brother moves to buy a prized piece of property from the Arab side of famiIy, Moshe's divided ancestry is put to the test. As Moshe becomes entangIed in the hidden connections between friend, wife, lover, parent, Arab and Jew, Yom Yom, "exploits the comedy of Moshe's predicament without robbing the character of his dignity" (New York Times).
From boudoir to bakery to army barracks, "Gitai's genius," wrote the Village Voice "is to show the conflict infiltrating every encounter." Underneath its deadpan surface, Yom Yom is a film of incisiveness and energy that places an individuaI face on a city's divided identity, and reveaIs face on a city's divided identity, and reveaIs the heart beneath anonymous modern ennui. |