Gynecologists are like uncut dogs. Vysotsky’s once famous song about the “Sea of Israel,” in which he ironized over the Jewish theme, but in fact only multiplied the myth of the Promised Land, seemed to have little to do with what was actually happening. Oddly enough, despite the mass departures, the topic of Russian Jews in Israel, by and large, remained unworked in the cinema for a long time, even though the process was permanent. But a few waves left for permanent residence did not prompt the feature film to serious analysis: nothing significant by the end of the twentieth century was not removed.
If you do not count the semi-documentary film of Mikhail Kalik “And the Wind Returns” (1991) or the purely non-fiction essay of Viktor Kosakovsky “Pavel and Lyal” (1999) about emigrated Leningrad directors-spouses Pavel Kogan and Lyudmila Stanukinas. Arik Kaplun was born in Russia. He also moved to Israel at the age of 20. For a long time looking for money for his debut film, the main role in which played his wife Evelyn. The success at the festival in Karlovy Vary drew attention to the picture that crossed national boundaries, which does not happen often with Israeli cinema.
The film takes place in the early 1990s, when Saddam fired missiles at the small state. And if it weren't for Big Brother's help, who knows how it would have ended. However, the director does not care about the social aspect. He is much more interested in delving into the mentality of former Soviet citizens who decided to live a second life in another country. Yana literally has to start from scratch, as the young husband, having seized her allowance, rushed back to Russia, leaving the pregnant wife to fend for herself.
Calmly reasoning that the most logical thing in such a situation would be to go after him, Yana tried to get a plane ticket, but she was not allowed to do this, demanding first to return the lifts. Moneylessness and emotional devastation forced her to have an abortion. But her misadventures did not end there: immediately it was urgent to pay money for the room. So it's time to take my own life. But friends are known in trouble, as are the best Jewish qualities. As a result, detractors come to Yana to help, and the bad ones become good.
The director avoids the temptation to fall into social neurosis, he is smart enough not to resort to typical mythologems, such as the mandatory performance of Tum-Balalaika, the general study of the Torah, circumcision and so on. Without claiming the special quality of the author’s vision, Kaplun manages to grasp the peculiarities of the national character. Friends of Yana is elusively reminiscent of Soviet-era Georgian cinema with a typical conflict of just good people with very good people. The fragility of ancestral ties is fully paid for by an ineradicable sense of national community.
But the director could not finally abandon the author’s claims: he still tried to instill conceptual “shoots” in the genre structure. Still speculative element look love games Yana and her new lover in gas masks, which they are forced to wear every time during the next air attack Iraqi missiles. As a result, there is a suspicion that without gas masks they would not have succeeded. But the main thing is that Kaplun made a movie.