{"id":1950567,"date":"2025-08-09T02:19:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-09T02:19:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=1950567"},"modified":"2025-08-09T02:19:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-09T02:19:07","slug":"a-well-made-dark-exploration-of-israeli-families-and-repression","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/a-well-made-dark-exploration-of-israeli-families-and-repression\/","title":{"rendered":"A well-made, dark exploration of Israeli families and repression"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div data-article-body=\"true\">\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The movie stars Irit Sheleg as a joyless supermarket cashier who gets sucked into her coworker&#8217;s (Regina Spector&#8217;s) sexual life.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\"><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.jpost.com\/israel-news\/culture\/article-804077\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Tropicana;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \"><em>Tropicana<\/em><\/a>, a new Israeli film that opened on Thursday, is well made but relentlessly bleak.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The movie opens at a supermarket in a small town in the south of Israel at night. A mortally wounded cashier drags herself across the floor, leaving a trail of blood. It might seem that the movie is going to be a slasher film, or a Hitchcock-style thriller, but the story shifts to Orly (Irit Sheleg), another cashier at the store. It turns out that the murder victim was Sigal (<a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.jpost.com\/diaspora\/antisemitism\/article-862556\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Regina Spector;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">Regina Spector<\/a>), the head cashier, and Orly sees in her colleague\u2019s death opportunity as well as tragedy. She talks herself up to the manager, angling for a promotion, and at moments, Tropicana seems a little like the <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.jpost.com\/j-spot\/article-708995\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:TV series Checkout;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">TV series <em>Checkout<\/em><\/a> \u2013 without any of the laughs.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">A promotion would be a rare bit of good news in Orly\u2019s joyless life. She cares for her toxic, ailing mother (Rivka Bahar), and her obese son (Michael Levy), and has little connection with her husband (Dover Koshashvili). But while becoming head cashier wouldn\u2019t hurt, it seems it would do little to change her grim reality.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"relative mb-4\">\n<div class=\"relative\"><button aria-label=\"View larger image\" class=\"group absolute bottom-3 right-3 size-10 md:size-[50px] lg:inset-0 lg:size-full lg:bg-transparent\" data-ylk=\"elm:expand;itc:1;sec:image-lightbox;slk:lightbox-open;\"><span class=\"absolute bottom-0 right-0 rounded-full bg-white p-3 opacity-100 shadow-elevation-3 transition-opacity duration-300 group-hover:block group-hover:opacity-100 md:p-[17px] lg:bottom-6 lg:right-6 lg:bg-white\/90 lg:p-5 lg:opacity-0 lg:shadow-none\"><svg viewbox=\"0 0 22 22\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"size-4 lg:size-6\" width=\"22\" height=\"22\"><path d=\"M12.372.92c0-.506.41-.916.915-.916L21 0l-.004 7.712a.917.917 0 0 1-1.832 0V3.183l-6.827 6.828-1.349-1.348 6.828-6.828h-4.529a.915.915 0 0 1-.915-.915M1.835 17.816l6.828-6.828 1.349 1.349-6.829 6.827h4.529a.915.915 0 0 1 0 1.831L0 21l.004-7.713a.916.916 0 0 1 1.831 0z\"\/><\/svg><\/span><\/button><dialog aria-label=\"Modal Dialog\" aria-modal=\"true\" class=\"fixed inset-0 z-4 size-full max-h-none max-w-none bg-white hidden\"\/><\/div><figcaption class=\"relative text-sm mt-1 pr-2.5\">\n<p>A PAST Jerusalem Film Festival. (credit: ITAMAR GINSBURG\/JERUSALEM CINEMATEQUE)<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<h3 class=\"mb-4 text-lg font-bold\">What is &#8216;Tropicana&#8217; about?<\/h3>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The story starts to move when she finds Sigal\u2019s phone and answers it when it rings, which puts her in contact with some kind of swingers\u2019 club. Orly begins going to the assignations meant for Sigal, in search of human connection as much as sex, it seems. These encounters include an extended one with a double-amputee who lives with his mother. It wasn\u2019t clear to me how to take this whole sequence. The wheelchair-bound man and his mother seem sympathetic, and perhaps the sex is meant to be cathartic for Orly, but she seems so blank that it\u2019s hard to understand what it means to her, if anything.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\"><em>Tropicana<\/em> has drawn comparisons to the cinema of Austrian director Ulrich Seidl, known for his depictions of the dark side of human nature. But his movies have a certain irony and wildness that wasn\u2019t on display here; the film is so slow-paced that it seemed longer than its 82-minute running time.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Tobi has directed several music videos, and the images in the film are beautifully composed. In the director\u2019s note in the press kit for the film, he writes, \u201cSet in the worn landscape of <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.jpost.com\/tags\/south\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:the South;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">the South<\/a>, the film raises questions about intra-family sexual repression, the transmission of intergenerational shame, and the possibility of breaking the cycle of repression held in place by the matriarchy of the home. The film moves between everyday realism and a dreamlike dimension, demanding devotion to the abstraction it offers.\u201d If that intrigues you, then by all means see it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><em> \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em> \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The movie stars Irit Sheleg as a joyless supermarket cashier who gets sucked into her coworker&#8217;s (Regina Spector&#8217;s) sexual life. Tropicana, a new Israeli film that opened on Thursday, is well made but relentlessly bleak. The movie opens at a supermarket in a small town in the south of Israel at night. A mortally wounded [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1950568,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[341199,341193,341195,341196,341192,341198,341200,340677,341197,341194],"class_list":["post-1950567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-head-cashier","tag-irit-sheleg","tag-israeli-film","tag-philippe-lavalette","tag-regina-spector","tag-sexual-repression","tag-sigal","tag-slasher-film","tag-supermarket-cashier","tag-tropicana"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/A-well-made-dark-exploration-of-Israeli-families-and-repression.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1950567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1950567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1950567\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1950568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1950567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1950567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1950567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}