Love Trilogy: Reborn (2019) User Reviews

Total immersion

[Nozz · 9/10 · 9 March 2020]

Yaron Shani was co-director of Ajami, a film that combined a number of mostly related stories and that used nonprofessional actors. This time, it's not merely one movie with related stories but three related movies which by Shani's count contain a total of six stories. Surprisingly, he says you should not watch all three movies in a binge. They're somewhat taxing and he knows it. They're supposed to be. Shani says that when people aren't sufficiently taxed, they sink into depression; and he suspects that depression will be the next great plague in society.

So the movies depict difficult situations, and the nonprofessional actors knock themselves out improvising their way through. No word-for-word scripting, no repeat takes. And "Reborn" earned a shared best-actress award for its three lead players. How does Shani manage to elicit such performances? He immerses the actors in the roles for a long time before filming, and he claims that with such immersion "anyone can do it." After all, everyone can become emotionally invested in sports, and that's just as artificial. And everyone behaves differently in different situations.

From among the three films, this is the second one I caught. I caught it at a screening that was followed by a talk with Shani (and that's where I'm quoting him from). I think the first I saw, "Chained," was simpler. It more obviously had a main story developing in a clear direction. In "Reborn," if you're looking for a central protagonist to identify with and a central problem the protagonist is addressing, there may be a bit of frustration. We do see the central characters from "Chained" reappearing, and-- having seen that film and being, maybe, less than the ideal audience-- I found my interest disproportionately drawn to them. I also felt a touch of inconsistency between the presentation of the male lead of "Chained" there and in "Reborn." Maybe it's intentional; a question of point of view. Or maybe it's merely that, as Shani said, people don't always behave the same.

I think it was George Obadiah, a director of sentimental movies, who said "While I'm filming a scene, I'm crying. When I cry, the actors cry. When the actors cry, the audience cries. When the audience cries, the box office smiles." In the case of Love Trilogy, when the actors are totally immersed in the movie, the audience is totally immersed in the movie. What it means for the box office, I'm not sure, but it's impossible not to hope Shani and his trilogy achieve great success with their accomplishment.

Two women recover from abusive relationships, with differing success.

[maurice_yacowar · 10/10 · 21 October 2020]

Yaron Shani's Love Trilogy culminates in the bleakly optimistic Reborn (2019). Like the surprise revelation of radical flashback in the first film, Stripped (2018), the entire Reborn occurs within the period covered by the first two films. The second film, Chained (2019), focused on Avigail's marriage, which ended in her husband's double murder and suicide. The third film reaches back to trace the beginning of her love affair with Yael. This woman initially helps her to get pregnant, overcomes her own traumatic childhood to adopt a baby girl, and becomes Avigail's lover. Avigail's relationship with her teen daughter similarly rewrites the family tone from the earlier view. Here they are warmly intimate as the daughter frees Avigail from her burdensome, inhibiting long braids. However tragic the Chained shadow casts upon Reborn, the film celebrates love in the women's community. Where Chained centered on the violent cop husband, Reborn establishes his victim wife's superior sensitivity. This heightens the overall sense of tragic loss even as the film closes the trilogy upbeat - until we remember. In Stripped the motive energy was the younger male, the music student turned rapist soldier. Here his victim is revisited, as she has recovered from her assault and is reading from her new novel. In Reborn the two new men represent opposite concepts of manhood. The positive is the new husband who slides into the bath where his wife has just given birth to their son. (Like the rest of this trilogy but perhaps most obviously, this scene is presented with non-professional actors, with no script and is the product of a single take.) This man is loving, supportive, eager to join in his wife's immersion. But the implicitly central maleness in Reborn is the dying, comatose father. Insentient, unresponsive, he still drains the energy, confidence and harmony of his two daughters, Yael and Na'ama. The clear implication is that the adopted Na'ama was sexually abused by her father, leading to her troubled life as a prostitute and her clashes with Yael. After the two violent male heroes of the first two films, the power of the vegetable father is a strong indictment of the male sense of love as dominance. The final image summarizes the trilogy's faith in the generous community of women. The novelist has joined an organization that visits brothels to offer the women free and anonymous medical tests and treatment. That is, they remediate their abuse by men. This action countermands Na'ama's comment at the novelist's reading, where she observes the writer presents women as they are defined by their men. In the last shot the novelist (who has been raped by the young man she trusted) hugs the weeping prostitute abused by her father and speaks for both and for all women: "You are not alone."