Palestinian writer, director and star Elia Suleiman's two-time Cannes Film Festival prize winner is something of a rarity: A wry, mordantly funny black comedy that boldly embraces fantasies of Palestinian power.
Tensions are heating up in the Israeli city of Nazareth, and not just between Jews and the city's large Arab population. The Palestinians are also feuding among themselves, acting out their frustrations in the pettiest ways. One man routinely dumps trash into his neighbor's yard; another takes a sledgehammer to his neighbor's newly repaired driveway. A third wrenches the license plate off a car whose owner refuses to move it out of his way. Tired of all the bickering, one man (Nayef Fahoum Daher) confronts a troublemaker, but soon after suffers a serious heart attack for his trouble. The man's Jerusalem-based son, E.S. (Suleiman), rushes to the hospital, but the prognosis doesn't look good. As his father lies dying, E.S. attempts to negotiate a tricky relationship with a beautiful young Palestinian woman (Manal Khader) from Ramallah, who's forbidden to pass beyond the checkpoint that lies on the highway between her city and Jerusalem. To circumvent the barricade, E.S. and his lover meet at a parking lot alongside the checkpoint, where they hold hands and watch as Israeli soldiers routinely harass and humiliate Arab drivers. Shot in a off-beat, deadpan style — the use of long, static takes coolly recalls early Jim Jarmusch, as does Suleiman's clever use of an Arabic version of Screamin' Jay Hawkins's "I Put a Spell on You" — this hilariously low-key film is punctuated by inspired wish-fulfillment fantasy sequences filled with pro-Palestinian imagery that would be taboo in a western film. E.S. tosses a peach pit from a passing car and blows up an Israeli tank; his girlfriend defies the Israeli checkpoint and with a sultry strut that immobilizes the armed guards and pulls the watchtower behind her. In the film's most rapturous moment, a red balloon adorned with Yassir Arafat's face floats across the Jerusalem skies and alights on the golden Dome of the Rock. In its most inspired sequence, a female ninja (Khader), her head crowned by a halo of bullets and her faced wrapped in Arafat's trademark black-and-white checkered kaffiyeh, defeats a squadron of Israeli gunmen in a high flying fight scene that wouldn't be out of place in the rowdiest Hong Kong action picture. leave a comment --Ken Fox
