Perhaps it’s perverse, but Phobidilia, a movie that centers on Regev, a young man in self-imposed exile from the world, stands out for me in it’s portrayal of women. Oscillating between fantasy and reality, the vibrations blurring the distinction between the two, the film strikes a true chord with its two female characters: Daniela and Jessica.
Phobidilia, one of six films competing for the Israeli feature films prize at the Haifa International Film Festival, is based on a novel written by Yizhar Har-Lev, who co-wrote the script with the film’s directors Yoav and Doron Paz. Within the confines of Regev’s small apartment and garden the film sets up a dizzying reversal of opposing concepts – fiction/reality, success/failure – opening them up for observation with a self-conscious smile. It is an utterly self-conscious film, not only referencing film and television throughout, but exploring, through Regev, a consciousness constructed from that media.
These questions and oppositions are set in motion from the start: the movie opens as the camera surveys the ruins of Regev’s apartment while his voice narrates: “I had everything a man needs to be happy.” The counterpoint between a close-up on the sink full of food remnants and dirty dishes and Regev’s narrated list – “good food” – establishes a jaded ironic tone appropriate for a high tech refugee and his audience of contemporaries. The resourceful Regev has turned adversity into virtue – virtual reality. Retreating from the imperfect world into his apartment, he relies on television, phone and above all, the computer, to satisfy his needs.
Like many male fantasies, this one includes a woman, the lovely “I’m just drawn that way” Jessica, who lives in her bedroom, conveniently located on Regev’s computer screen, and like many male fantasies, it is disrupted and irrevocably altered by another woman: Daniela, who appears first as a chirpy, high pitched telemarketing voice trying to rope Regev into responding to a television survey with a promise of prizes.
How predictable is it that Daniela finds her way into Regev’s shut-off life? Very. But do I care? No, and I’ll tell you why. Other than moving the plot forwards, I don’t always understand why characters in movies do the things they do. Daniela’s motives, however, have an internal coherence that rescues them from the realm of romantic banality. She understands fiction and the need for fiction in our lives; it’s a tool for survival. One of my favorite scenes shows Daniela on the phone at work, talking to Regev and switching back and forth from her “client” voice to her “real” voice. Her attraction to Regev is not at all mysterious: he is intelligent, creative, cute in an appropriately wasted sort of way, complicated and about as inaccessible as a man can get.
Then there is Jessica, the “real” fantasy woman, a pay-per-view sex kitten in her soft pink bedroom, ready for anything at the click of a mouse – what’s not to like? Yet the relationship between Regev and Jessica is anything but simple. Jessica plays an active role in the unraveling of Regev’s perfect world, a very interesting choice on the part of the filmmakers. It would have been easy to let both these women remain clichéd images – whore and innocent ingénue – background figures in a film whose intended focus is on the internal world of an individual. Yet Daniela (Efrat Baumwald), while exuberant, is anything but innocent, and Jessica (Efrat Dor) is intelligently seductive and seductively intelligent. Both women are a powerful presence in the film.
Ofer Shecter gives a convincingly understated performance as Regev, endowing him with just the right combination of obsession, arrogance, pain and self-awareness. The distinction between internal and external reality is blurred as scenes of Regev’s fantasy and lived reality are interspersed with scenes from tv shows and movies, creating a palimpsest of contemporary urban life in its extreme version. Examining the inter-connections of mind with media and other minds and all the possible combinations thereof (including the infamous “ratings”), Phobidilia is a cinematic answer to those late night conversations over drinks, when someone asks: what if your brain could exist in a lab and receive all the necessary stimulations to imitate life – would you want to live like that?
