01/09/2017 - VENICE 2017: Israeli director Savi Gabizon returns after a 14-year hiatus with his new film, an acute and fascinating reflection on paternity and how to smile in the face of death

Becoming a father when your son is gone: it's a paradox, but it’s what happens in Savi Gabizon's beautiful film Longing [+see also:
trailer
interview: Savi Gabizon
film profile], which world-premiered in the Giornate degli Autori at the 74th Venice Film Festival. The Israeli director, absent from cinemas for 14 years after the success of his first three films, gifts us this acute, bittersweet and engaging reflection on his role as a parent, the fear of becoming one, selfishness, the ability to open up to the world and to rediscover it, and learning to look beyond the self.

Shai Avivi is one of Israel's best-known comic actors, but in Gabizon’s most recent film, he transforms into a sore, vain and disgruntled man whose life is turned upside down by a piece of news that threatens to question his entire life until now. His character, Ariel, is summoned to a bar by his college girlfriend, whom he has not seen for 20 years. The director, also the film's screenwriter, doesn't waste any time in catapulting the audience into a conversation between Ariel and Ronit (Asi Levi), who starts off with a smile, somewhat coy, but becomes increasingly tense after revealing the true reason for their meeting: 20 years ago, she gave birth to their son, whom Ariel never met, and whom he will never know as he recently died in an accident. After never wanting to have children, Ariel finds himself face to face with a missed opportunity.

What follows is a path of discovery in which Ariel must piece together his ghostly son's personality bit by bit, in all its entirety, which the very well written script reveals in small doses through the conversations that the man has with those who were close to the boy: his fiancée, his best friend, but in particular, Yael (Neta Riskin), the young teacher he was madly in love with, the main source of his torment and the subject of his poignant poems. Ariel begins to take on the role of a parent, jumping to his son's defence when necessary, talking about him as if he knew him, and trying to resolve unanswered questions. There are some rather bizarre situations during the film that make you smile: a desire for lightness that dominates the second half of the film, when Ariel decides to arrange a wedding between his lost son and a missing girl. A marriage between the young and deceased which, according to an Eastern tradition, is a means of guaranteeing the deceased a better afterlife; an almost impossible mission, but one in which the father finds a way of finally doing something for his son. 

"What sort of father would I have been?" is the question that Ariel will never be able to answer. But through his journey from solitude and individualism to sharing, Ariel overcomes his traumas and will at least learn something about himself and heal some wounds along the way. It is a well-measured and sensitive story about a somewhat bizarre second chance, which has the ability to improve life a little by smiling in the face of death. 

Longing was produced by Israeli company United Channel Movies. The German firm Films Boutique is responsible for international sales.

(Translated from Italian)