Putting the Emphasis on Friendship

Among the films in the latter part of the 15th annual Israel Film Festival (screening at the Music Hall, 9036 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills) are several especially strong offerings. The 57-minute made-for-TV “Purple Lawns” (Saturday at 5 p.m. and Dec. 17 at 5:15 p.m.) is a crisp, incisive yet sensitive study of a friendship developing between several women. The film allows us to see just how dire life can be for ultra-Orthodox women.

Yael (Orna Fitusi), a lovely blond gym instructor at an Orthodox school for girls, and Shlomit (Noemi Promovitch), an edgy cartoonist, share a sunny Tel Aviv flat but need a roommate to make it more affordable. They settle on Malka (Smadar Kilchinsky), a beautiful, self-effacing Orthodox woman. The contrast between the secular, independent Yael and Shlomit and the withdrawn Malka could not be more vivid. Clearly, Malka is troubled but exceedingly reluctant to confide in her new roommates. As they draw her out and become involved in her problems, Yael and Shlomit are confronted with truths about themselves in a manner that is painful but ultimately maturing.

Writer Shirley Ram-Amit brings sharp insights to Malka’s impact on the other women, while also revealing Malka’s outrageously unjust fate. Director Dina Svi-Riklis elicits beautifully shaded portrayals. “Purple Lawns” is as wrenching as it is economical.

That description applies with equal force to the taut and unsettling “Buzz” (Sunday at 9:30 p.m. and Tuesday at 7:15 p.m.), written by Yale Stern O’Dwyer and directed by Eli Cohen. It’s set in the affluent Tel Aviv suburb of Herzliyah but with nary a change could be in Beverly Hills. Ido (Tony Tin), who’s 14, and Raphi (Izik Atsmon), who’s smaller and perhaps slightly younger, are trouble-prone classmates whose cruel and destructive antics escalate while their families plunge deeper and deeper into denial.

Ido is the dominant of the two, the son of a prominent, politically well-connected attorney blindly determined to protect his son from any form of punishment and a mother who spoils him rotten. Ido has a scary Superman urge while he holds the fatherless Raphi in his thrall. Raphi’s single hard-working mother, a beauty salon proprietor, is loving but too busy and too exhausted to give her son her full attention. In any event, she lapses into just as rigid a state of denial as Ido’s indulgent parents.

After wrecking a food stand, the boys are forced to stand trial after a huge effort on the part of a dogged policeman (Sharon Tzur). In the two-week interval before the trial, they are supposed to observe a lenient, unenforced 10 p.m. curfew. That’s when this forceful, well-acted film starts getting truly frightening.

One of the highlights of the festival is its inclusion of the first six segments of the highly popular, 13-episode 1997 TV series “Florentine,” which will be presented as a three-hour program Sunday at 9 p.m. The series title refers to the name of a sunny working-class quarter of Tel Aviv, where its nine 20-something characters live. Crafted with compassion, insight and humor by a clutch of writers, and directed with consistent verve and grace by Eytan Fox, “Florentine” is swiftly addictive. Its young actors are not only attractive and talented but have a refreshingly natural and spontaneous quality.

The linchpin figures are Kareen Ophir’s vivacious, auburn-haired Tutti and Ayelet Zorer’s Shira, a patrician brunet. They have been friends since high school in Jerusalem, and now--the time is 1995--they share a spacious but unpretentious apartment. Also in resident is Shira’s lover of nearly two years, the husky, handsome Maor (Adi Terer) and their gay friend Iggi (Uri Banai), a struggling painter who can camp it up but is clearly strong and resilient. Moving in with them, at least for now, is Tutti’s and Shira’s high school pal, the sensitive Tomer (Avshalom Pollak).

In high school the three friends formed an inseparable quartet with Erez, who was Shira’s boyfriend but was killed in Lebanon in 1993 while serving in the armed forces. So devastating was his death to Tomer, who was also having problems with his overbearing wealthy father, he withdrew his life savings and took off on a two-year sojourn in India. He now wants to study film, but his family wants him to be a lawyer. Meanwhile, Shira has become a TV kiddie show star while Maor works as a gardener, and the discrepancy in their incomes and status is beginning to affect the proud, macho Maor, even though it would seem that the couple are truly in love.

Meanwhile, aspiring singer Tutti, secretly a virgin, is thinking that a tall, lanky Ukrainian, Sasha (Yisrael Damidov), who has just moved into an apartment upstairs, might just be the guy to change her status. Since the last three preview tapes arrived sans English subtitles, “Florentine” becomes a cliffhanger for the non-Hebrew-speaking reviewer. However, the sixth and final chapter in this presentation is of special interest because it deals with the impact of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin on Tutti, Shira and their friends. (213) 966-4166.

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Shot in expressive black and white, Michael Idemoto and Eric Nakamura’s “Sunsets” (Fridays and Saturdays at midnight at the Sunset 5, also Saturday at 9 p.m.) has an assured, sophisticated style as the filmmakers zero in on three pals during their last summer together in Watsonville, the old agricultural community just below Monterey.

Josh Brand’s Gary, fresh out of jail, is reckless, angry, alienated from his family and clearly headed for big trouble unless levelheaded Mark (Idemoto), who’s all set to go to college, and the passive, paunchy Dave (Nicholas Constant) are able to get their friend to change direction. Or, will they become caught up in his self-destructiveness? For a low-key film with such an easy flow and lack of pretense, “Sunsets” is actually reflective and tough-minded. (323) 848-3500.

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The UCLA Film Archive and the Silent Society present a true rarity tonight, “Three’s a Crowd” (7:30, in Melnitz Hall’s James Bridges Theater). The 1927 film is the first feature by Harry Langdon, directing himself after having broken off with director Frank Capra, who had brought the comedian to the peak of his career with the evergreen “Strong Man.” Capra’s career soon took off while Langdon’s plummeted. “Three’s a Crowd,” which Variety summed up as being “no sensation but neither is it a cluck,” finds the wistful Langdon falling secretly in love with a woman whose husband has abandoned her and their baby.

This Saturday’s installment in the UCLA Film Archive’s “1968: Cinema in Revolution” series is a double-feature for a ‘60s time capsule: “The Magic Christian,” written by Terry Southern and starring Peter Sellers and Bob Rafelson; and Jack Nicholson’s proto-music video “Head,” which juxtaposes rock ‘n’ rollers with images of the Vietnam War. The Monkees star, and there are guest appearances--no kidding--by Victor Mature, Annette Funicello and Sonny Liston. Saturday at 7:30 p.m. at Melnitz Hall. (310) 206-FILM.

Note: LACMA’s “Paul Schrader: An American Auteur” concludes this weekend with screenings of “Mishima” and “The Comfort of Strangers” Friday at 7:30 p.m. Then, onSaturday there’s a 7:30 p.m. preview of Schrader’s new film, “Affliction,” with Schrader and star Nick Nolte making appearances. (323) 857-6010.

Smadar at left Orna and Noemi, right photo