ISRAELI FIM FESTIVAL: This taut thriller adapted from Edna Mazia’s novel Hitparzut X provides several new twists on a timeworn premise: jealous husband kills his wife’s lover.
The feature directing debut of TV veteran Eitan Tzur, Naomi is beautifully acted although the plot hinges on several highly improbable developments and a too-convenient contrivance.
Ilan (Yossi Pollak) is a highly respected professor of astrophysics at the Technion institute in Haifa who appears frequently on television. Although 60ish, portly and dry of manner, he’s married to Naomi (Melanie Peres), a stunning, vivacious 28-year-old blonde who designs book covers. We’re not told how and when they met and why she was attracted to him but old guys can and do end up with trophy wives, or 'eye candy" as Ilan’s mother snootily describes Naomi, so that’s not implausible.
His suspicions aroused when his wife doesn’t answer her mobile phone and arrives home late one evening, he later tracks her down to a house where she’s in a passionate clinch with her lover Oded (Rami Heuberger), who makes nature films.
After arranging to eat at a restaurant where his wife was supposed to meet Oded, Ilan has a brief conversation with him and the next day goes to his seaside house while Naomi is visiting Tel Aviv.
Here the narrative strains credulity as the cocky Oded offers Ilan a drink and they talk in a civilised manner: no hint of discomfort from Oded or anger from the cuckolded husband. Ilan asks the much younger man his intentions and is told, 'Naomi is the only woman I want to wake up with every morning."
Ilan seems to take that in his stride. But when Oded takes out a pipe which Naomi had given him, originally a present to her husband who’d later quit smoking, the professor strangles him. Was that on impulse or always his intention? Mazia’s screenplay tantalisingly leaves that question dangling.
However, the plot further beggars belief when Ilan drives to the home of his bossy mother Kathy (Orna Porat) and confesses. What are the odds of an 80-year-old woman taking such shocking news so calmly, then offering to help her son dispose of the body, declaring, 'No corpse, no crime"? It transpires that Kathy wasn’t a faithful wife and she doesn’t want her son to suffer similar indignities but even so her conduct is hard to swallow.
Ilan sheds a few tears, showing a fleeting remorse, but thereafter he seems untroubled and continues to live more or less happily with Naomi.
The contrivance revolves around Ilan being best friends with a detective, Anton (Suheil Haddad), with whom he grew up almost as brothers.
To its credit, the film does add an intriguing third act revelation and Tzur skillfully builds the suspense until the ripping resolution.
Pollak is superb as the conflicted Ilan who’s forced eventually to come to terms with his crime of passion and the consequences which he could never have foreseen. In her first co-lead role, TV actress Peres, who resembles a young Gwyneth Paltrow, is convincing as a woman who’s caught in a deadly romantic triangle.
