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2008-04-29

by John Esther

Interview: Etgar Keret

Summary

An interview with the short story author and co-director of Jellyfish

Article

Winner of the Camera d’Or at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, Jellyfish (Meduzot) is a brisk 78-minute film about three women whose stories crisscross into a moody piece capturing contemporary life in Tel Aviv, Israel.

One day at the beach, Batya (Sarah Adler) finds a young female (Nikol Leidman) apparently left for the high tides of life and takes her in to her home. Afraid to leave the “orphaned Annie” home, Batya brings her to work. While working at a wedding reception, Batya’s meta-narrative overlaps with the story of Keren (Noa Knoller), a bride who breaks her leg crawling out of a bathroom stall during the reception. With a broken leg Keren can no longer go on a Caribbean honeymoon with her new husband, Michael (Gera Sandler), and this does not make her happy. Also at the wedding is Joy (Ma-nenita De Latorre), a Filipino woman who has left her young son back home in the Philippines in order to come and work in a foreign country (not unlike the mother, played by Kate de Castillo, in Under the Same Moon).

Now enduring lives they probably never dreamed of living, these three women make their way through Israel’s most progressive city. Separately yet similarly they struggle with identity and loss thereof, innocence and hopelessness, sex and suicide.

In order to communicate with themselves these women often come down to the sea for a few moments of repose, reconciliation and reconsideration of where they are, who they are, and what they will become as life’s ever-changing landscape under the Tel Aviv grid accretes into something else.

Co-directed by real-life husband and wife Etgar Keret and Shira Geffen, based on a screenplay by Geffen, Jellyfish marks the cinematic collaborating debut of one of Israel’s most famous creative couples. Geffen is a famous author of children’s books and plays while Keret is one of Israel’s most famous contemporary short story writers. Keret’s novella, Kneller’s Happy Campers was adapted into last year’s American independent film Wristcutters: A Love Story. Keret’s first short film, Skin Deep, won an Orphir (Israel’s Oscar).

In this exclusive interview, Los Angeles Journal spoke to Keret about Jellyfish, the Israeli-Palestine conflict, and dating.

Los Angeles Journal: Why did you want to make Jellyfish into a film?
EK: My wife worked on the script and she sent it to many directors who didn’t get it, didn’t want to do it. It was kind of like we do it or it won’t happen. It’s not like I said, “All right, I want to direct films.” If I wanted to see this film I’d have to do it.

LAJ: Which of the characters do you identify with the most and why?
EK: All those people are connected to people I know in my life. They could be a little bit my wife, a little bit me, a little bit my mother. None of them is foreign to me, but Michael is based on me.

LAJ: Tel Aviv plays something like a character in the film and it is the third or fourth film within a year where I have seen that happen. For instance, The Bubble. What is it about Tel Aviv and the people living there that lend them to being expressed in cinematic terms?
EK: Tel Aviv in The Bubble and our Tel Aviv is a completely different city [Laughs]. I feel it’s natural if you live there. Tel Aviv is the one place I would want to live in Israel for sure. In Tel Aviv you have this mixture. If you go into an apartment building in Tel Aviv you might find a gay couple, an Israeli-Arab, a rightwing fascist, as well as others living in an apartment getting along. It’s the one place where in other places it doesn’t work in Israel, but actually works in Tel Aviv. There’s the beach. There is no barrier between the city and the ocean. There is something about the sea that brings this feeling of normality to Tel Aviv that you don’t have in other places. Basically when you go down to the beach you take off your clothes and these defenses disappear. An Israeli solider and Arab may be playing soccer. Once you take off the clothes all you see is the human being.

LAJ: Speaking of this comfort at the sea, the sea has often been viewed as a symbolic metaphor for women. What kinds of connections were you trying to draw along these Freudian/Lacanian themes of women, sea and comfort?
EK: My wife wrote the script. As a woman she’s kind of interested in feminine characters. As you know in most of my fiction my protagonists are male. These characters are not completely separate psychological entities. Many times those feminine characters echo one another. Each character plays an emotional side. They are all part of this mood organism.

LAJ: That is what I am suggesting. There is no separation but rather a connection in the film with regard to its themes and the way women are portrayed, the sea, and the sea as a place of refuge and comfort where we can see people as people – beyond these abstract and arbitrary barriers -- racial, geographical or otherwise.
EK: You’re right.

LAJ: Was it a conscious issue to not address the Arab-Israeli conflict in your film that many other Israeli films do – at least those that play here in the United States?
EK: It’s not a conscious decision, but basically I am saying there are very few people who wake up in the morning and seriously think about the conflict. You think about your girlfriend who dumped you or will your car get towed. For Israelis it’s different than the spectrum of what you see on CNN. You only see things when they explode. The everyday experience of people living in Israel is very much the same like any other place in the world. Maybe the way people die in Israel is a bit more original. It’s not like I have this ideology of ignoring the issue but it’s only right sometimes to ignore it. If you don’t, then you kind of reduce yourself to only something you know and what you are. It’s almost a dehumanization act. What if all the African films were about poverty and hunger. It’s not like there isn’t those things, but people in Africa laugh and cry. They miss their parents. They’re just human beings.

LAJ: You mentioned CNN. In what ways do the US media represent Israel, and the Israel-Palestine conflict, differ from Israeli media?
EK: There’s not such a huge difference between the medias. There is a huge difference between the media and what is going on. The media are really interested in the abnormality. It’s not just Israel; it could be Sri Lanka. Usually you have a limited space which you can capture something and it’s usually done by exaggerating or simplifying. Like the Swiss have good cheese and chocolate, but the Swiss actually invented techno music, but it’s not what you would do if you had a 30-second piece on Switzerland [Laughs]. So we are the land “Where you kill or get killed.” This idea you can be pro-Israel or anti-Israel or pro-Palestinian or anti-Palestinian is the same logic as being pro-blond or anti-blond or pro-short people or anti-short people. You don’t do it because you know there are many different types of blonds and short people.

LAJ: Lastly, what do you think about these interviews where you talk about your work and Etgar Keret? Do they serve the work? Should the work speak for itself?
EK: The work is the most important thing, but basically I don’t have a problem talking about myself. In the most cynical perspective I’m doing this for people to read my books, see the movies I make. I don’t feel like I’m selling myself. I’m just saying it’s kind of like when you’re in love with somebody and you want him or her to be a part of your life, to have sex with, then basically you go on a first date, The first date you talk about yourself. When I’m on a first date I’m not made to do things I don’t want to, but at the same time I’m doing it because I want to get laid. It’s okay, but I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t have a book or film out. I have a book and film coming out so all the more reason to go out dating [Laughs].