Bliss (Hemda)

Sassi (Sasson Gabay) is more than 20 years older than his wife Effi (Asi Levi) and worried about his declining powers. Surgery has left him seeking treatment for impotence, but Effi insists she’s content with their emotional closeness. In her work as a physical therapist, though, Effi sees every day the link between body and heart. The biggest challenge to their loving relationship has been the gambling debts Sassi’s adult son keeps running up. But the couple’s fragile understanding, compounded by the presence of two young men, introduces new threats.

Their teenage grandson, Omri, returns from living with his father in Europe, at loose ends and clearly in need of guidance. For one thing, he can barely stand to wear a shirt. Then a young patient turns up at the swimming pool where Effi conducts therapy sessions. He comes to confront her about something from their past, something complicated, contested, and clearly painful to them both.

Novelist and filmmaker Shemi Zarhin (The Kind Words, TIFF ’15) brings characteristic insight and observational humour to Bliss. Written and shot before the current war, certain scenes touch lightly on interactions between Jewish and Arab culture and language in Israel.

Zarhin directed Gabay and Levi years ago in Aviva My Love; the two have an ease and chemistry that allows both love and tension to flow. As Zarhin reveals more about the couple and the people disrupting their bliss, motivations and contradictions form a complex narrative where the idea of bliss itself becomes a prism, reflecting each character in a whole range of colours.

CAMERON BAILEY