BEST FILMS OF 1998 - List in Progress
by Mike Lorefice

42 Up
Michael Apted

***

Alice and Martin
Andre Techine

***

Beloved
Jonathan Demme

***

Besieged
Bernardo Bertolucci

***1/2

Lovers of the Arctic Circle
Julio Medem

***

The School of Flesh
Benoit Jacquot

***1/2

Full Movie Review

Yom Yom
Amos Gitai

Following a decade long self-exile in France, Amos Gitai returned to Israel to work on his city trilogy. The middle entry, Yom Yom, subtly finds his hometown, the port city Haifa that's notable as the place Arabs and Israeli's more or less peacefully coexist and even intermarry, in a state of flux. Moshe's (Moshe Ivgy) incomplete and pointless life seems something of a composite of previous entry Devarim's primary characters: a womanizer similar to Ceasar, seemingly careerless as Israel, and a passive introvert comparable to Goldman. Riddled by hypertension and fatigue, he seems unable to improve or reconcile any aspect of his life. The title translates to Day After Day, and due to Moshe having no reason for being he's simply passing them, usually by whining about his healthy while drifting from woman to woman. The messy, aimless, and isolated younger (mostly middle-aged) generation haven't been as successful in life as Moshe's Arab father Yussuf (Yussuf Abu-Warda) and coddling Israeli mother Hanna (Hanna Meron): they have a pretty good marriage, a longstanding bakery, and seem to have overcome their difficulties well enough to get what they sought (as well as average citizens can be expected to). Gitai's film is a series of vignettes based around Moshe's comical inability to hack the internment known as the army reserve, his crumbling infidelity ridden marriage to Didi (Dalit Kahan), his cluelessness to the fact his Don Juan best friend Jules (Juliano Mer) beds "his" women (and seems to do a far better job of it), and most importantly Yussef's reluctance to sell his childhood home to Jewish developers. Material development seems to expedite moral bankruptcy, with the characters becoming increasingly irrelevant as the city "matures". Yom Yom is a portrait of Haifa stumbling and bumbling through a chaotic period: a tug of war between old and new where the citizens occasionally muster the energy to grope for identity. Moshe represents Haifa in that he's being pulled in every direction, but seems discontent with each, hence the slight amount of effort that obviously doesn't cut it. Gitai's calm and leisurely look at local ennui and inertia contrasts fragments of stagnant life with turbulent transition from an influx of developers and media, big interlopers directly and indirectly chewing up and spitting out the local culture. The tension doesn't overtly erupt as much as in the trilogies other parts Devarim and Kadosh, it's results are more toward weighing on the characters to the point they're perpetually worn down if not out. [8/29/07] ***