Online Toronto Jewish Film Festival kicks off, ironically, with a Skype-based troubled marriage story
By Linda Barnard
The 28th Toronto Jewish Film Festival’s online fest opens Saturday, May 30 with writer-director Keren Ben Rafael’s second feature The End of Love, a relationship drama that feels like a slice of all our lockdown lives.
The central couple lives thousands of kilometres apart. He’s in Israel; she’s in Paris with their son. We watch them communicate in real time via Skype calls, with all the disconnection, longing for physical reunions, creeping screen fatigue and miscommunication that has become the new reality for many of us.
The immediacy of the film is sure to be a big part of the discussion when Ben Rafael and The End of Love co-star Judith Chemla participate in a Zoom Q&A session, one of several filmmakers and experts that are included in ticket prices.
Where have we seen this before? Judith Chemla is a mom maintaining a relationship by Skype
The festival runs until June 7 and spotlights Jewish-content film and filmmakers with a 39-film slate that includes four international and 17 Canadian premieres. They’re available to stream in the GTA area with online tickets or festival passes.
The TJFF replicates a festival experience by screening three or four new movies daily. Links to films are good for 24 hours once started.
“Despite these difficult circumstances, our festival remains devoted to providing the kind of eclectic line-up that audiences have come to expect from us, and we hope that this online festival will entertain, educate, inspire and challenge,” said programming director Stuart Hands in a media release.
The lineup includes dramas and documentaries, as well as shorts and a series of archive films.
The festival closes with Israel, Land of the Series, a documentary about the global reach of Israeli-created TV shows.
Among the films on offer are the comedy Give Me Liberty, Hungary’s Best International Feature Oscar entry Those Who Remained and Short Lily, about 1950s comic book illustration pioneer Lily Renée Phillips.
Powerful public figures are also examined in TJFF films with Dayan: The First Family, a four-part docuseries about five-generations of the Israeli dynasty that produced some of the country’s most famous politicians, rock stars and poets and Bully. Coward. Victim. The Story of Roy Cohn.
For more on the film lineup and how to get tickets and passes, go to www.tjff.com
Review: The End of Love
By Linda Barnard
Rating: A-minus
“I need contact,” a woman complains in writer-director Keren Ben Rafael’s The End of Love, a relationship drama told via real-time video calls that feels like a slice of all our lockdown lives.
Yuval (Arieh Worthalter) has returned to Tel Aviv for what he hopes is a few weeks. He’s there to renew a visa that will allow him to live in France with his wife Julie (Judith Chemla) and their nearly one-year-old, Lenny.
We watch the couple communicate through device screens from early morning to well into the night, with all the disconnection, longing, creeping screen fatigue and miscommunication that has become the new COVID reality with Zoom meetings and Facetime family chats.
“These Skype calls will end up driving us crazy,” Julie rightly predicts.
The opening film of the 28th Toronto Jewish Film Festival’s online fest begins with an attempt at intimacy. But Yael and Julie can never seem to get their emotional schedules in sync. One is tender when the other is aloof and judgmental. Jokes fall flat. Things start to feel oppressive.
Their moods and temperament flip back and forth as real-life worlds shape the online conversation.
At the same time, they’re navigating money difficulties and the ego hit with news photographer Yuval’s inability to find work. Julie has increasing pressures with her job, along with being a single parent to their child.
Slowly, online encounters are less about their conversations, becoming more immersive as the cameras track real-life events and observations.
Ben Rafael brings other characters into the mix, but provides little context for some of the ensuing drama and histrionics. The claustrophobic world of the couple trying to find some kind of connection through a screen is far more compelling.
Worthalter and Chemla give outstanding performances. Our allegiances swing from one to the other, until one character does something unthinkable.
Ben Rafael gives the most telling piece of dialogue to the barely verbal baby Lenny, who looks up when he hears the distinctive chime of an incoming Skype call. “Daddy?”
The End of Love (À coeur battant): Directed by Keren Ben Rafael. Starring Judith Chemla and Arieh Worthalter. Screens at the Toronto Jewish Film Festival May 30.