In the official synopsis that appears on the Tel Aviv Cinematech website, “Night in Haifa” is described as a “satirical comic drama” but I found neither drama, comedy nor satire in the film. A more accurate description would be “overlapping political manifesto”. Amos Gitai’s new film, which was already completed in 2020, is filmed (I’m careful not to use the word “occurs”) during one night in a club in Haifa near the railway, to which an art gallery is attached. During 99 minutes we (that is, those of us who stay until the end) watch the actors, more and less familiar, moving on the screen and sometimes speaking to each other in an unspoken language, in what seems more like an experimental theatrical performance: the “drama” is cut off, and nothing develops to nothing
The “characters” include an Israeli artist named Gil (Tzchi Halevi) whose political photographs are on display at the gallery. He is having an affair with the Palestinian curator Lila (Maria Zarik), who is married to Kamal, who is many years older than her (Mekram Khoury). Did you notice that the name of the movie is a play on words (in English it’s called “Lila in Haifa”)? There are also Roberta (Clara Khoury), a wealthy American Palestinian who wants to bring the photographer to America, the Palestinian cook and his Palestinian partner, a Jewish gay and a Palestinian gay, the photographer’s sister Naama (Naama Price), and the Palestinian Anwar (Anwar Zhor) who spews fragments of speeches political, and those speeches seemingly combine into dialogues that do not sound like dialogues. Everything is fragmented. But artistically, like, like.
Take for example the five scenes of Naama. In the first, she meets her brother in the gallery and immediately tells him that she and her husband are no longer sleeping because she does not appreciate his writing and he feels it. In the second, by the bar, she turns to Anwar and starts a conversation with a question with which, as we know, it is common to start conversations with people we don’t know: “Do you hate Israelis?”. Anwar replies to her in English that she does not understand Hebrew, and bursts into a speech about the occupation. In the third, Naama stands next to Lila (or maybe it’s Bahira, three days after the viewing I don’t really remember anymore) and speaks to her, or to herself, in unspoken Hebrew. In the fourth, unless I missed something along the way, Naama returns to the bar and this time flirts with a handsome Palestinian who introduces himself as Amir (Amir Khoury). It’s a graceful scene because for the first time in the film something happens between two of the characters that feels almost real. Then they go to fuck in the car, and we don’t see them anymore. So what do we have here? A collection of parts of scenes where nobody (almost) behaves the way people behave, and it doesn’t coalesce into any human or political or artistic statement.
It is impossible to write about a film by Amos Gitai without mentioning Godard – who was even recruited for the purposes of advertising “Lila Be Haifa” and his quote appears in the ads. But if Godard used actors as props to design a conceptual cinema (and it’s not that I like Godard), “Night in Haifa” feels like just a overlapping film, with a pose. The long opening shot shows us a rather impressive camera movement – although with the technical equipment that exists today it is no longer an issue – and then the cinematic expression also becomes quite basic. The train that occasionally passes in the background and muffles the voices of the speakers (I’m careful not to use the word “characters”) seems to be saying something, but the film is not interesting enough to tempt us to try to decipher what it is saying.
The only actor who manages to cope with the little he got from the script and create a sympathetic character is Makram Khoury, in the role of the worried husband who fears that his young wife will fall into the clutches of the American. Perhaps it is the seniority, and undoubtedly the great talent of one of the best actors in Israel, that allow him to sound like a human being. At the end, Hanna Laslow also makes a lively guest appearance, but it is not entirely clear how her character ended up on a date with a young Palestinian guy. Leslaw probably owes Gitai since she won the actress award at the Cannes Film Festival for her performance in his film “Free Zone” in 2005. “Night in Haifa”, by the way, received particularly bad reviews when it was presented in the main competition at the Venice Film Festival. Someday the directors of festivals in Europe will also stop buying the empty pose.
★★ 2 stars
“Haifa at night”, directed by: Amos Gitai. With Tzachi Halevi, Maria Zarik, Macram Khouri, Naama Price. Israel 2020, 99 min.