TAMP: Tel Aviv’s Miserable People or What’s Wrong with Israeli Movies

THINGS BEHIND THE SUN

 

Two stars

 

Directed and written by Yuval Shafferman. Hebrew title: Ha Devarim Sheh M’ahorei Ha Shemesh. 100 minutes. In Hebrew.

 

With Assi Dayan, Sandra Sade, Tali Sharon, Tes Hashiloni, Zohar Strauss, Hila Vidor, Rozina Kambus

 

When you go to a horror film, you know what to expect: weird creatures, scary music, gory deaths. With an action film, you’ll see car chases, the hero running and leaping to avoid pursuit, and a villain scheming against him. It’s the same with all genre films: There are certain conventions that are utterly predictable. So it is with a certain kind of Israeli film, a genre I will dub TAMP, for Tel Aviv’s Miserable People. Yuval Shafferman’s just released “Things Behind the Sun” is a textbook example of the TAMP genre and anyone who sees it must be prepared to endure all its hallmarks. The following are a few rules that apply equally to “Things Behind the Sun,” as well as a truckload of other TAMP films, including such classics of the genre as “Life According to Agfa,” “Shuroo,” and “Joy”:

One: It is slow and boring. Long pauses are the rule, as are repetitive scenes, very often set indoors in a cramped apartment.

Two: It does not focus on a single figure but on a host of unpleasant characters, often a family, who constantly fight with each other. In “Things,” which is about the Grossman family, a vague and ineffectual father, Itzhak (Assi Dayan, who won the Ophir Best Actor Award for his performance here), is at odds with his wife, Smadar (Sandra Sade), a painter about to have her first gallery show, which consists entirely of paintings of her family and herself nude, done without their knowledge or permission. Both of them either spar frequently with or ignore their depressed, in-the-closet lesbian daughter Na’ama (Tali Sharon); their pot-smoking 27-year-old son, Amit (Zohar Strauss), who still lives at home,  nursing various resentments; and their chubby 10-year-old daughter, Didush (Tes Hashiloni), who sits around, watching reality TV, arranging her coins featuring pictures of celebrities and and cutting school. The plot, such as it is, is about how the family reacts when Itzhak’s father, with whom he has not been in contact for 10 years, is hospitalized in critical condition.