Film review: Zero Motivation - tale of Israeli female soldiers takes risks
Israeli director Talya Lavie's debut feature tells three loosely connected stories about the life of women soldiers in a film that's part soap opera, part absurdist comedy
Starring: Dana Ivgy, Nelly Tagar, Shani Klein
Director: Talya Lavie
Category: IIB (Hebrew)
Like many other Israeli women, director-writer Talya Lavie spent two years after high school in the Israel Defence Force (IDF).
But she spent her mandatory time in the military far away from combat situations, instead waging war on petty bureaucratic practices and boredom.
Lavie's 2006 short was the first film to come out of her IDF experience.
Her debut feature uses the earlier work as the foundation for one of its three loosely connected stories, "The Replacement", "The Virgin" and "The Commander".
Lavie denies that any of 's characters are based on herself. Still, it's easy enough to conclude that her sympathies lie with the two young female (Israeli slang for soldiers who don't see combat) at the centre of the film, which is part ensemble soap opera and part absurdist comedy.
"Postal NCO" — and champion Battleship computer gamer — Zohar (Dana Ivgy) and "Paper and Shredding NCO" Daffi (Nelly Tagar) are first seen heading back after their too-short leave to the desert base where they work in the administration section.
The two are joined at the tail end of their journey by nervous looking Tehila (Yonit Tebi), who tells them she's been assigned to the section. Leaping to the conclusion that Tehila's her replacement, Daffi — who has been angling for a transfer to Tel Aviv — is filled with glee, while Zohar sulks at the prospect of being abandoned by the only person close to being her friend at the remote outpost.
After Daffi gets her wish to leave the base, albeit under circumstances that are very different from those she had originally envisioned, Zohar fixates on the fact she's still a virgin, and wants to rectify the situation.
This unhappy clerical worker continues to frustrate her superior, the committed Captain Rama (Shani Klein), with her sassy rebellious ways and sullen slacker moods. Matters come to a head the morning after Zohar is commanded by Rama to work through the night at the office.
At times coming across like a female-centric Israeli version of meets , also has some creative elements that are entirely its own.
These include a storyline about a Russian conscript (Tamara Klingon) who thinks she's possessed by a ghost. But as it's considered a comedy, it's startling to see this movie include a bloody suicide as well as an attempted date rape by a paratrooper — although sexual violence is par for the course in films about female soldiers (as in and ).
Other eyebrow-raising scenes in the risk-taking film are those showing full-frontal male nudity — albeit viewed in darkened circumstances — and one that features a Holocaust joke.
The way that this character took the subject so lightly says much about the joker's suspect character. Still, in view of how casually the Holocaust crack appears, it's just as well that no reference was made to the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
