notjustaboutsex

Some films stay with you.  That could be said for …Working Woman, a new film by director Michal Aviad.

It’s a simple story. A beautiful  Israeli mother of three, Orna, (Liron Ben Shlush of “Next to Her”) is offered a job by a man who used to be her captain in the army. He’s now a big shot in real estate and promises her a lucrative career with advancements. She loves her husband who has just opened a restaurant and realizes the extra money could really help. Plus, she’s ambitious for herself and to prove she can do it.

When the developer Benny (Menashe Noyhen) tries to kiss her after a successful real estate negotiation, she is shocked, scared and disappointed. But he apologies profusely and says it won’t happen again. But it happens without sex, like when he keeps her working late with the prospect of ‘already ordered sushi’ and keeps turning the lights off and on. It is sick and childish, but she is doing so well in bringing in her own business, that she makes herself ignore it.

Her husband, Ofer (Oshri Cohen) is very good at sharing family chores, gets upset when he receives a special business license thanks to Benny’s interference. Something doesn’t smell kosher, but he respects his wife and holds his tongue. They even attend a party at Benny’s palatial home and it is clear to all that Orna and Ofer are tight.

But what happens in Paris can’t stay in Paris. After a celebratory dinner in Paris, selling homes to French Jews, both Benny and Ofra are feeling good about their work and are slightly tipsy, Benny pulls a fast one…the old, can’t get my door open trick…and ugliness takes over. It’s a very well done scene…Ofra struggles but both in shock and awe resigns herself to the drunken abuse because she has little choice.

Back in Israel, her otherwise terrific mother doesn’t want to know and Ofer starts blaming her for allowing it.

Orna is sensitive but fiercely protective of her family and needs a recommendation to get future work.She must garner all her strength and at the same time accept her own complicity in ignoring what she didn’t want to see.

She resolves the problem with great courage handling Benny in front of his wife to get what she needs. He tells her how lucky she was to learn so much with him, and she agrees. But we know what she learned in the loss of innocence is a far greater lesson than selling a condo at the beach.

Whether the director used Harvey Weinstein as a template for Benny, is hard to say…but this is a wonderful film dealing with the strains that women suffer in the workplace especially when one person holds all the power. In Working Woman, the lead takes her power back.

photo: lambstar

What could Steve Bannon have meant by this line as he opens Alison Klayman’s documentary The Brink? He’s talking about visiting Europe with his populist agenda and his Torchbearer, Duck Commander, Phil Robertson’s film. I played it over twice but am still not sure what he was really trying to say. Apparently, he was totally surprised to discover that Birkenau was built specifically for the annihilation of a race—that meant  that intelligent men sat around with coffee cups making their plans. “Normal people who weren’t devils”, as he puts it. He should see BBC/HBO’s The Conspiracy, which dramatizes the 1942 Wannsee Conference, where the European lawyers and high level SS drink champagne and discuss the Final Solution like they were planning  a campaign to push rayon over silk. Kenneth Branagh playing General Heydrich was also charming. Bannon, an unlikely warrior,  never expresses any irony as the film shows him going about the business of aiding and abetting other populist and racist causes himself.

This fascinating look into the Fritto lover who sadly gave us Mr. Cheetos is particularly eerie because Bannon is not without some charm and wit, and one keeps wondering if he truly believe what he proffers. It feels like an act. As if he’s found a niche and he thinks he can win in this niche, so he sticks to it. If he had made more successful films, would the Right have become his cause, or is he in it out of defeat?  Could he possibly be so blind to his own racism? Does he think the Populist values of recreating the White World in his image is sensible or even evolutionary?

Not once in this film is the troubled environment mentioned except as a jokey excuse for some piece of legislation. Not once do we hear of the pain epidemic, lack of decent jobs for all people, high rate of infant mortality in our country and too many more issues that he has no time for.   He travels on private planes, enjoys expensive hotels, hangs out with ex Goldman Saxers and  doesn’t consider himself an elitist?

What is Raheem, a Muslim who sounds just like John Oliver doing working for him? That should be the sequel.  This guy goes on about all the Arabs living on the Edgeware Road for the last ten years in London.  I lived in London 25 years ago and there were always Arab stores and restaurants.  He and Epstein, a Republican candidate who wanted Trump to write his name on her pregnant belly are breathtaking in their self-deception. Apparently, Ms Epstein is a Messianic Jew, and was neatly defeated by Haley Stevens.  Aw.

What is so intelligent about this film, is that the director stays quiet, only occasionally asking him a question. Instead he lets his own blindness speak for him.

I don’t know and really don’t want to know what happened in his childhood to bring him to this place. He’s good looking (underneath the rust), funny, sort of aware and has potential to be a human. Can’t we get him into one of those Steiner nursery schools where he can learn to love himself first and then just maybe others? Only if Betsy DeVos stays out of it..

See the film.