David O'ConnellStrangers
March 31st 2010 01:10
This unassuming, little-seen Israeli film is the work of occasional directing duo Guy Nattiv and Erez Tadmor. A humanistic drama about the core characteristics that attract people despite conflicting ideologies and the weight of historical implications, Strangers (2007) works so well because of its intelligent, plausible, often poignant improvisation and the naturalistic performances of its two leads.
It’s Germany, 2006, and the World Cup is in full swing when the paths of two people cross on a train in Berlin. Eyal (Liron Levo), an Israeli, has ventured here on a whim, fulfilling a vow he made with an ex-girlfriend to attend the football finals regardless of their circumstances. Rana (Lubna Azabal), a Palestinian living in France, is at a loose end, arriving in the city as a means of escaping some unspecified pressure at home. In the film’s only contrived scenario, Rana mistakenly picks up Eyal’s almost identical backpack, necessitating a meeting for a swap. They discover a mutual bond - that of being strangers in a city neither is familiar with, and decide to help one another in finding accommodation. It's a far from simple task in a city abuzz with football fever. An attraction slowly develops, surprising them both, but when Rana is suddenly called back to Paris, everything changes.
The need for the directors to shoot Strangers digitally – with a single hand-held camera - works in the film’s favour. There’s an absence of gloss, but neither does it tip the scales the other way and try to create something unjustifiably gritty and bleak. There’s a legitimate sense of time and place, not only with fragmentary peeks at the colour and atmosphere of Berlin at the time, but of the dramatic circumstances in Lebanon occurring concurrently. None of it is overwhelming but it doesn’t need to be; it leaves you with suitably strong impressions that swim at the edges, bringing the central premise into stronger focus in the foreground.
The film was shot in just a couple of weeks with only a synopsis, in place of a working screenplay, as a starting point. It makes the work of leads Levo and Azabal all the more remarkable for the onus was obviously placed almost entirely on them to bring the story to life. They converse mostly in English which enhances the charm of their improvisation and the chemistry between them is spontaneous. It certainly feels like they’re speaking dialogue lifted from a structured piece.
The superb Lubna Azabal as Rana and Liron Levo as Eyal
Ultimately a gentle, persuasive story of fatalistic attraction set against a harsh backdrop of the world at a specific time and place, the film stealthily works its way into your mind and heart. Some of the most affecting moments between Eyal and Rana are wordless and layered with Eyal Leon Katzav’s evocative but understated music; that’s not to say that the burgeoning relationship is sentimentalised or cheapened in any way. Rather the opposite is true – it feels like a natural progression with nothing seemingly stilted or forced in the way these two people interact and more is revealed about them. I believed in these characters as people and wanted their lives to be less complicated by ethnicity and religion and war – things that tend to loom like a dark shroud over us all, to colour and taint the chances of two ordinary people in the world from discovering fundamental commonalities.
Strangers is a small, obscure work that will mostly go undiscovered. We often refer to a film as modest in an almost patronising, gently derisive way, as if it could never have amounted to anything more. Nothing could be further from the truth with Strangers. This is a small gem to be treasured, with a palpable weight to its themes, its undeniable universality. Well worth a look.
Strangers has been released on DVD by Madman.
Trailer can be found here.
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