MamaGravity
good back-story, and good acting
Breakinger
A Brilliant Conflict
Helllins
It is both painfully honest and laugh-out-loud funny at the same time.
popcorninhell
Jellyfish, for all its generous spirit and life-affirming moments, doesn't shy away from the little absurdities that inundates everyday existence. Even in the same frame there is a glow amid the isolation and personal embitterment. An unbearable lightness that cannot help but expose the chalky hands of fate. Those who have ever asked in exhaustion, "why me?" can find a lot to love about this little Israeli import.The film is told through a hyperlink narrative. Though its themes are much more ethereal than those of Traffic (2000) or New Year's Eve (2011). That and the narratives don't so much interlock as they migrate towards and away from each other. We follow the progression of three struggling women adrift in noisy Tel Aviv, vexing over life's ennui. While doing so, the women cross paths, barely glimpsing each other's existential angst.The first women is the young Batya (Adler). She's a sullen, ineffectual banquet hall waitress, struggling to keep her job and an apartment that's slowly falling apart. Meanwhile her divorced, working professional parents all but ignore the warning signs of her mounting depression, brought about when her boyfriend leaves her. Unexpectedly, while trying to relax at the beach, a mute child (Leidman), freckled and wet, appears like a vision. She tries to find out to whom the child belongs to, to no avail.The second woman of our story is newlywed Keren (Knoller) whose Caribbean honeymoon has been botched by a faulty bathroom stall. Her ankle now broken, she tries to make the best of a worsening situation, by following her husband Michael (Sandler) to an aging sea side hotel in town. It is there that Michael meets an attractive writer (Albeck) whose femme fatale allure threatens the strength of their new marriage.The third woman is a Filipino caretaker named Joy (De LaTorre). Joy tries and repeatedly fails to connect with her employer (Harifai) whose tersely shouts in Hebrew and German, neither of which Joy speaks. She pines to have her son with her, vainly communicating with him through short collect calls and promises of gifts and visits.A common motif that permeates all three stories is that of water. Joy is mesmerized by a toy boat she wants to get her son, while Keren complains that they're a short walk from the beach yet can't see the sea. She also begins to write a poem, wistfully equating her feelings of isolation to that of a ship in a glass. Finally there's Batya whose discovery of the child on the beach, unlocks dormant traumas that include her parents arguing as the young Batya drifts out to sea in an inflatable tube. Could the water represent transition and the possibility of renewal? Perhaps yes, perhaps not.The magical realism that seeps into the lacquered grooves of this film brings with it occasionally irksome subjectivity that's nearly impossible to decode. This film doesn't hold your hand but rather lets you explore the serendipity of Jellyfish's world through the eyes of three women who are dulled by constant misfortune. Some may find their woes pedestrian and cloying, especially considering the film is Israeli and completely ignores political realities. Yet choosing characters that exhibit the incessant, hard to describe hum of anxiety and depression gives the film both a timelessness and a universality. In the end, there's solace in the arms of others; a lesson that those quietly suffering would be wise to heed.While occasionally stodgy, Jellyfish doesn't wear out its welcome, finding just enough pulp in the stories while reveling in some art- house expressions and compositions. The subjectivity of its framework works in its favor to deliver a film that can be read in many ways, including being a frank and effective meditation on depression. It does all this without being showy or overly pretentious but instead lingering on the deflation of character expectations, before rewarding its audience with small but meaningful victories.
lksun-898-18775
The movie has a multi-layered plot rich with symbolism. The elfin from the sea, who refuses to take off her float ring, is a jellyfish, which somehow symbolizes unfulfilled childhood wishes. The corporate strong woman, or politician, whose appearances on TV and posters punctuate the movie, laments nowadays parents fail to give their children anything. The main character Batya, while she was a child, had a deep craving for ice-cream while on the beach but the ice-cream man was turned away by her mother. The jellyfish elfin shows Batya a photo album with only one picture in it, and it is the ice-cream man on the beach, with a breeze blowing his shirt (as it moves on the photo). When the mysterious poetess, who has given up her suite to the honeymooners, commits suicide, the groom Michael finds a dead jellyfish under his feet on the beach. The jellyfish imagery is aquatic, as the poetess refers to a ship in the bottle, sealed up and not feeling any wind and thus stagnant. The Filipino domestic helper, Joy, wants to buy a large ship model for her son back home. When for the second time she gazes at the toy boat in the shop's display window, a magical effect appears: the little sails are fed by the wind, as if a real-life ship is on high sea—a little stirring of real life, like the ice-cream man's shirt catching a breeze in the photo? A third time in front of the shop, she finds it sold and becomes very much dejected, only to find it in her employer Malka's living room, meant as a gift to her. So, Joy is the only one that succeeds in giving her child something. The parent-child disappointment is not a one-way traffic, as Malka's daughter who hires the Filipino helper Joy to take care of her aging mother tries to win some acclaim to her performance in Hamlet, and all she gets from her mother is: "You lied on the floor half of the time, and uttering words that are not understandable even to people on stage!" At the end of the movie, the actress lady stares from the street resentfully through the window as her mother Malka embraces Joy inside the house.
ArtHouseRoyalty
Am I the only one that sees thru this crap? Lets start with the title - The big metaphor her - Jellyfish - drifting away, taken by the currents which carries them away as it pleases, like the "characters" in the film. GIVE ME A BREAK, I would be ashamed to submit this to my literature teacher at 9th grade in high-school. No (real) deeper meaning, no prose, the dialogue is very unauthentic, the stories inter-cut in random and meaningless ways and do not create a whole which is bigger than its parts. Heavy handed, edits and artificial framing that draw attention to themselves, and a long take that screams "I'm a long take, look at me!" Bad lighting and sound design. So the mother was a bad mother to her daughter, whose apartment is flooded, and is busy fund-raising to the homeless and poor while her daughter is homeless herself. Wow that's what I call deep irony - not.
slugdub
Not quite sure how to describe this movie other than it captures the daily frustrations of Israeli life and the mystery that can befuddle anyone in their daily life, young or old.All movies normally have a bit of glass between the viewer and the actors/actresses. This movie seems to dissolve that. A very strange phenomenon. But you feel more connected to the people on the screen. Like they are right before you. The only exception would be those moments that seem like dream sequences, but are all too real... or rather surreal.I started out watching this movie to pick up a little bit of hebrew and soak up some of the sights of Tel Aviv. I am happy that I did. The scenes are very accurate. I especially liked one scene involving a taxi driver, a cat and some other key details that will amuse anyone who has spent time in Israel.I got much more from this and plan to bring this movie to my parents house for mother's day. I hope they will enjoy it as much as I did.
