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OR (My Treasure) review
:. Director: Keren Yedaya
:. Starring: Ronit Elkabetz, Dana Ivgy
:. Running Time: 1:40
:. Year: 2004
:. Country: Israel
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My Treasure by Keren Yedaya is a tragedy. A tragedy that is written in the flesh of a woman, Ruthie, a street prostitute who has walked for too long, and the future mirror of that tragedy in her daughter, Or. From the start the tragic outcome is obvious, the on-screen revelation of the battered and overused flesh of Ruthie on the screen being the augur of the final destiny of her very own daughter's destiny; the flesh of her flesh, the womb of her womb. The story is simple, and classic. It is one about the re-enactment of the same tragedy throughout the generations, in essence the heritage of the burden, and the impossibility to outrun one's own past. But just as much as being about the past, it is also a story about women, or rather Woman.
There are, of course, brief scattered moments of joy dispersed here and there throughout the film, but these instants serve only to contrast the depth of the bleakness. Or, (light in Hebrew), is her mother's treasure, the most precious thing Ruthie has, yet she cannot help destroying this treasure, as this destruction is inscribed in her existence, in who she is, in what she was made into by both poverty and patriarchy. This light, that is Or's name and heritage, shines through most particularly when she laughs. The laughter of light is her defense mechanism; thus, the first night, when she is attempting to prevent Ruthie from going out to the streets, Or locks her in, and they watch TV. While watching, Or suddenly begins to crack up, in a laughter that is addictive, which makes Ruthie begin to chuckle, also. Despite the genuine warmth of the moment shared between mother and daughter, the laughter at the same time reveals the sadness of the situation. In another particularly striking moment, Or, just before becoming a call girl, has been allowed her one night of respite and love, with Ido, her neighbor, who despite all, seems to genuinely care for her. They are together, before the moment of the first kiss they will share, and for seemingly no reason Or begins to laugh hilariously. And as she laughs, we realize that she is sincerely happy, that she will perhaps never again have a moment as innocent as this, and perhaps above all, that she is young, too young to even know how innocent and young she was. It is a laughter whose lines reveal despair and innocence and hope and fear all at the same time. Despite the obvious drama of the situation, the film never goes as far as to get sappily melodramatic thanks to both the stoicism of the acting and the sobriety of the quietly elegant camerawork.
The camera, revelatory without ever becoming intrusive, reinforces the relationship between Or and Ruthie. The characters are just as often centered in the frame as they are moving along the very edges, showing the spectator nothing but a hand, a thigh, an arm. Although there is a feeling of tragedy that emanates from the screen, there is no intimacy. The intimacy is something that is reserved for the mother-daughter relationship, something that lays beyond the comprehension of the audience, that is not shared. Or, despite her abhorrence of her mother's streetwalking is willing to sacrifice everything for her, her youth, her time her energy, until the final sacrifice in which she lays herself on the altar of her mother's profession, and through love or injustice or fate transforms into her mother.
This metamorphosis of daughter into mother serves a double function; while exploring the hopeless future of Or in her mother, we are at the same time watching the innocence that Ruthie once had in Or. This tight bond is reinforced by symmetrical framing of both characters. This graphical symmetry between the two women, the two principal bodies moving in and out of the screen is reinforced by some type of invisible cord which attaches the two characters even further. Yet, from a purely visual perspective, the difference is just as marked as the comparisons made formally. The rapprochement of the characters is tempered by the physical difference, and the daughter an mother are separated by an enormous gap not only of age, but of wasting away of the body, a dissolution of the flesh, most markedly demonstrated by a scene in which they are both naked in the bathroom: the soft flesh of youth versus the hard callous thighs of an aging prostitute is the symbol of both the films motion and its motionlessness.
The film is one of absolute immobility. The camera is static, the characters do not progress, and only the inevitable unfolds. There is no blame, no apology, no moralizing as the characters try to deal more or less the best they can with what they have been granted. There motivations are tragically that of quotidian necessity. And as Faulkner wrote "Necessity has a way of obliterating from our conduct various delicate scruples regarding honor and pride."
Yaron Dahan
 Movie Reviews: Foreign Films
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