The Holy Land
Review by Joseph Mark Davis for Reel Movie Critic
*******
Cast
Oren Rehany	Mendy
Tchelet Semel	Sasha
Saul Stein	Mike
Directed by Eitan Gorlin. Dramatic thriller. Rated R (for nudity, sexual situations, and violence). Running time: 96 minutes. In English with some Hebrew and Yiddish

"The Holy Land," directed by Eitan Gorlin, may be the safest way to poke around modern day Israel and see it at its best and worst in 96 minutes. The film is actually from 2001 but is currently beginning to make its way around film festivals and art house cinemas. The film was produced and filmed in Israel and in the Occupied Territories, and was done in English, with a healthy dose of Hebrew and Yiddish.

The writer-director, Eitan Gorlin, is an American who has apparently spent time in Israel. In this film version of his own novel we follow a young Israeli man, Mendy (Oren Rehany), who leaves the structured environment of his religious family in Tel Aviv for the seedy side of Jerusalem. He stalks and falls hard for a Russian slave named Sasha (Tchelet Semel) that he meets in a brothel. I don't use the word slave here lightly. Slavery is still alive in some parts of the world and in parts of Israel the victims of it tend to be young Eastern European, or in some cases Brazilian women, who are forced into slavery as sex workers. Their passports are held for ransom, and such is the case here with Sasha, who escapes her self-described "owner" to run off with Mendy.

It is fascinating to watch a film take part within a mis en scene that we are all accustomed to seeing on CNN. The cinematography captures the beauty of the country and at the same time drives home a reality that we miss on videotaped news clips. One particularly disturbing moment occurs on a bus as the driver silences some singing women so that he can hear the news. The newscast features the latest terrorist alerts for the Jerusalem area. They are delivered as ordinarily as the latest weather forecast might be in most countries. We then see Israeli army soldiers making Palestinians do push ups, and making them hop around on one leg at a checkpoint, apparently to humiliate them. It is also interesting to watch the interaction of the characters here - Israeli and Palestinian - and how they coexist while every effort is made to keep them apart. Among the Israelis alone we have such an enormous spectrum between the settler and the refusnik, the American-Israeli and the Russian-Israeli, that it keeps you on your toes trying to remember who is what, in case it becomes relevant to the plot, which it inevitably does.

It is this looking glass view into Israel that makes the film worth seeing. The plot is sometimes unclear. Some of the dialogue reads like Eitan Gorlin was trying too hard to say something profound. And there is some overacting, and some affected performances. But there is also a great performance by Tchelet Semel, who creates an undeniably appealing character in Sasha. To have her accompany you along a journey into the most volatile region on the planet makes this film worth the ride.