Off-the-wall Black Comedy Changes the Pace
by ALEX ("CHAIM") DELEON

Self taught filmmaker Nony Geffen in his own film, "Not In Tel Aviv"

In a festival loaded with serious soul searching subjects, self-taught filmmaker Nony Geffen's blatantly blackish comedy was a surprising change of pace. The title "Not In Tel Aviv" already serves as an alert to expect the unexpected, which this movie is from beginning to end, starting with the fact that it is shot completely in black and white and ending with no clear ending. This is clearly a low budget indie which some might label as self indulgent, but whatever you call it the Israeli film establishmen took it seriously enough to send it to a major film festival, Locarno, where it was a big crowd pleaser and picked up a Jury prize.  

The picture opens with the dismissal of a handsome young high school history teacher, Micha, for unspecified reasons by a seemingly sympathetic school prinicipal. Micha is obviously unhappy with this decision but does not protest directly and accepts his fate stoically, He gets in his car and as school is letting out kidnaps one of his teenage students, Anna, at gunpoint. We soon realize, however, that she does not mind getting kidnapped by him and seems to have a little crush on her teacher. He next stops off at the home of his mother who is very ill and asks him to kill her as she no longer has any ffurther will to live. He asks Anna to fetch the .45 from the glove compartment of his car, but warns her not to run away. 

Don't worry, she says, I'm not running away. He then lovingly dispatches mom with a shot to the head which  we hear off camera, but only see Anna's face, wincing  slightly. Euthanasia accomplished he takes Anna home with him but treats her like a child and rebuffs her clumsy amorous advances. Already quite comical in a jugular vein. Whatever this guy is he is no child molester, but then, Anna is not exactly a child any longer either. He actually has the hots for a former schoolmate, Nony, who works in a Pizza parlor and wants to use Anna as a decoy to attract the more mature Nony. This almost fails because Anna lacks the "finesse" a go-between needs. Anna doesn't understand the word "finesse" but Nony is finally reeled in and comes along back to Micha's messy pad. We now have a rather quirky threesome -- all three in one bed, not nude, but hugging, and it gets whackier and whackier from there. With Micha seeming very depressed Nony asks Anna what's wrong: The reply: "He's had a bad day --he got fired and killed his mother".

The film is filled with racy dialogue pertaining to sex, but always tongue in cheek.

Example: In the car the girls taunt Micha about the size of his pecker and claim they want to see it. He is embarassed but agrees to show it to one of them only. An argument then ensues between the girls, Anna claiming she has the right because she is mature and Anna is too young. Anna in the back seat says that's just why she should be the chosen one, because she's "never seen a dick in her whole life, whereas Nony has seen hundreds" ... Impeccable logic!  There is no penis revelation scene, but this is typical of the irreverant tone of the entire flick.

When Anna complains that she misses her mother Micha takes her home and mother, a pretty blonde, asks "Are you the teacher that kidnapped my daughter?" He claims it was no kidnapping, so mom invtes him in to meet some people she's having over -- a meeting of a Women's Power group!   Very funny scene.

Micha beats a hasty retreat but Anna comes running after him to resume their strange sado-masochistic friendship ... The two girls and Micha are next seen playing two-on-one basketball. A guy on a motorbike pulls up and tries to attack Micha on grounds of sexual depradation but is overcome by the women in a furious struggle as one screwball scene follows another. Eventually Nony will seduce the seemingly sexless Micha in his sleep and Anna will get very jealous and try to leave, wherupon Nony plants a passionate kiss on her mouth telling Anna that she and Micha both need her. By this time there is no telling what's going to happen next -- as the country music soundtrack keeps commenting slyly on the action and the plot gets more and more hairy -- round and round she goes --where she'll stop nobody knows, but i ain't gonna tell! -- Except to say it was one heckuva ride and a few people were sufficienttly offended to walk out -- always a good sign in a picture meant to bend people's customary frames of reference.

MAIN CAST: Nony Geffen as "Micha", Romi Aboulafia as "Nony", Yaara Petzigas as "Anna"

Critical reaction: This film, which was shown at Locarno last summer where it won a special jury prize, has had much written about it and has divided serious trade paper critics right down the middle. They either love it and admire its youthful energy, or think it is nothing but low-brow junk food. One critic thinks it is a homage to Godard's 1963 celebration of Menage-a-Trois, "Band a Part", but I saw it more as a homage to itself -- a wild card black comedy with maybe some of the kinds of tricks Godard used to spring on audiences (here multiple flash stills of the principle trio in various stages of dress and undress inserted at random a propos of nothing) -- many jump cuts that are simply arbitrary scene changes, but most of all delightfully deadpan performances in what is patently meant to be a unique statementless statement in the often heavily moralistic Israeli film world -- a dark gray absurdist comedy that works shamelessly on its own level. The intentionally counter-to-expectation dialogues are set much of the time to a kind of country rock sound track in both Hebrew and English which comments on the action in closely geared counterpoint.
The Music, a mixture of folk, blues, funk and rock, is by Uzi Ramirez, the wildman of the Israeli Indie scene, and most of the songs are from his first album "Lick My Heart" the title alone of which, let alone the songs themselves, serves as a perfect match to Geffen's narrative style --or was it the other way around? Uzi is working on a second album and I would hope to see another Geffen opus linked to it.