Introduction

This is a post that is a repurposing of an old-school Mini-Review Round-Up post. As stated here I am essentially done with running multi-film review posts. Each film deserves its own review. Therefore I will repost, and at times add to, old reviews periodically. Enjoy!

Aliyah

This film has a very interesting premise: a Parisian man dissatisfied with his life of dealing drugs and bailing his brother out of trouble seeks Aliyah, emigration to Israel, though he’s never been that in touch with his roots; he just seeks a new start. However, what occurs is a fairly bland, opaque character study of a many scarcely changing and hardly facing obstacles to reach what he thinks will be his change. There’s a rather New Wave ethos of seeing scene X then Z, such that you know Y occurred, so why bother watching it? However, that works better when impact is heightened. Here it is lessened. Furthermore, there is a late-film scene where if you haven’t followed the character’s plot his would-be girlfriend literally plots it out in a very thinly-veiled parable trying to keep him in Paris. Worse yet it changes nothing and her sudden head-over-heels passion for him never makes sense. This is a film that keeps one more disengaged than its lead seeks to be and fails because of it.

5/10