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Close to Home
Female Empowerment Flick from Israel Out on DVD
By
Karov la Bayit
DVD Review by Kam Williams
 Smadar (Smadar Sayar) and Mirit (Neama Schendar) are
typical eighteen year-old girls: a little boy crazy, obsessed with their
appearance, and impatient to discover what adulthood will bring. But
because they are Israeli, they have to put their plans for the future on
hold due to the country’s policy of compulsory military service.
This means that they must spend their days in uniform
on patrol in Jerusalem, a city ever on edge and just another suicide
bomb away from being rattled to its very core. The task these new
recruits are dispatched to handle sounds simple enough, namely, to stop
anyone who looks like an Arab in order to search them and to ask for
identification.
However, while Mirit is conscientious and is inclined
to take her job seriously, Smadar is a slacker who could care less about
the assignment, since she is very reluctant about being in the army in
the first place. Nonetheless, the ill-matched pair are partners, and the
stark contrast and simmering tension between the two is what supplies
the cinematic texture to Close to Home, an engaging slice-of-life
adventure which very effectively portrays the plight of young females on
the frontlines of the war on terrorism.
It is fairly obvious at the outset that Smadar and
Mirit are ill-equipped for the job emotionally. Yet, when the plot
finally thickens after an explosion downtown, the young heroines land
right in the midst of the madness with bodies strewn all over the
street, and must mature instantly to help handle the situation. Despite
this harrowing specter of Arab-Israeli tensions, Close to Home remains,
at heart, an uncanny coming-of-age examination of the different ways in
which two young women adapt to circumstances beyond their control to
survive a situation bigger than the both of them.
Excellent (4 stars)
Unrated
In Hebrew and English with subtitles.
Running time: 99 minutes
Studio: Genius Products |
Lloyd Kam Williams
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 Lloyd
Kam Williams is a syndicated film and book critic who
writes for 100+ publications around the U.S. and Canada. He is a member of
the African-American Film Critics Association, the New York Film Critics
Online, the NAACP Image Awards Nominating Committee, and Rotten Tomatoes. In
addition to a BA in Black Studies from Cornell, he has an MA in English from
Brown, an MBA from The Wharton School, and a JD from Boston University. Kam
lives in Princeton, NJ with his wife and son.
IMDiversity.com is committed to presenting diverse points of view.
However, the viewpoint expressed in this article is the opinion of
the author and is not necessarily the viewpoint of the owners or
employees at IMD.
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