Review: Close to Home

Close to Home is a film about love, friendship and policing a large population of Arabs. It centers on a group of young, naive female Israeli Army border guards who seek out companionship where they can while trying to do a good job and escape the icy stare of their hardened commander, Dubek (an entirely convincing Irit Suki.) Looking very much like the Israeli cousins of Claire Forlani and Selma Blair, the two leads are Mirit (Neama Schendar) and Smadar (Smadar Sayar.) Their days consist of smoking, talking, and dishing out petty humiliations like ID checks and bag dumps, all the while being watched by an upper tier of scowling superiors who have seen the worst that can come of such routine interactions. While the girls can handle the onrush of foot traffic that begins every morning and continues throughout the day, many of them clearly lack the physical wherewithal to overpower the problem suspects that occasionally come along. The film's most intriguing moments come when we see several members of the exclusively female guard unit swarming around a solitary Arab who goes off script

Although one of the recurring themes is self-doubt among the Israeli rank and file, Close to Home is aggressively self-aware in terms of its political shadings; each happening that could be perceived as casting an anti-Israeli light is blocked near another event that seems to reinforce the no-nonsense attitude of the grizzled veterans in the bunch. For better or worse, co-directors Vardit Bilu and Dalia Hagar have manipulated the plot so as to place the 'job' the girls do mostly in the background and focus on building a relationship drama between the two principals. Smadar is introduced to us first, conducting a point-by-point inspection of a Palestinian woman in a curtained booth as small as a fitting room. When a fellow inspector suddenly suffers a mini-breakdown on the scene, due to her own misgivings about the validity of the invasive, humiliating search process, Smadar just watches dispassionately. Mirit is closer in spirit to the broken-down recruit; she suffers from serious reservations about her service, but prefers escapism over conscientious objection.

Given the subject matter, the film hardly has to work at all to create the taut atmosphere of a traditional thriller; one of the most effective scenes has the diminutive Mirit demanding the identities of two impatient Palestinians on a busy street and then finding her pen is out of ink as she tries to take down their names and information. In an instant, the flicker of her authority vanishes, and she chooses to cut them loose rather than detain them any further, even though something in her training told her that they needed to be detained. The film is at its best in these little moments, and somewhat less successful when it tries to to make an awkward jump into the lifestyle problems of the young ladies. Mirit, for instance, is awkwardly seeking the attention of a man who came to her aid in a moment of need and Smadar may or may not have romantic feelings for Mirit, although the film never delves into the issue explicitly. The gruff commander Dubek is also (unnecessarily) compelled by the filmmakers to show a soft side.

Where Close to Home falters most is in its static visuals; the film employs a somewhat washed-out pallete of army-green backgrounds and an omnipresent harsh blue tint. The combined result can be interesting to look at now and then, but a less static camera and better shot structure would have helped tremendously. There are also missed opportunities galore; a 'cameo' by a male Army commander who comes to inspect the girls and give them something of a pep talk is a good opportunity for a quick burst of character, but its precisely at moments like this that the film retreats into a documentary-like shell. Another scene, on a busy public bus, draws us in immediately because of the possibility for trouble, but ends up going nowhere. There are times when the screenplay is crying out for a director who instinctively knows how to sell the scene at hand, but often no one is home. This is not a film that suffers from any major miscalculations in story or character, but instead settles for being mediocre when it could have been imminently watchable.

Although those who go into the film looking for an overt political statement will be disappointed, Close to Home does have some interesting things to say about power -- how difficult it is to maintain and how quickly it can dissipate under the right (or wrong) circumstances. The incredible machinery constructed by the Israelis to police the Palestinians in their midst is shown to be extremely vulnerable to the unexpected and not nearly as in control of events on the ground as it would like to be. The closing scene of the film is an unexpected and powerful one, that is undoubtedly intended to leave the audience with a prescribed impression. It involves one of those mildly troublesome Palestinians that the soldiers are trained to deal with forcefully, but with "sensitivity and restraint." Mad as hell and not intending to take it anymore, he begins to throw his weight around and dares the small contingent of females to try to stop him from going about his business, if they dare. What happens next is for you to discover.