A girl tries to save her mother in ‘Or’

Israeli filmmaker Keren Yedaya has already established a reputation as an outspoken political and social activist, yet her debut feature “Or (My Treasure)” is a work of exceptional subtlety and is all the more captivating and heart-rending for being so. Yedaya trusts her considerable powers of observation and the strength of her personal point of view to express implicitly her firm sense of commitment.

She introduces the viewer to Ruthie (Ronit Elkabetz) and her teenage daughter Or (Dana Ivgy) as Or arrives at a Tel Aviv hospital where her mother is being released after treatment for a yeast infection. The love between mother and daughter, both darkly beautiful women, is palpable, and soon Or’s devotion to Ruthie lifts the older woman out of her depression. At the same time Or has come to a decision: to persuade her mother, after 20 years as a streetwalker, to quit, and to that end she has lined up Ruthie with a job as a housecleaner for a kindly woman.

With her sculpted features and statuesque figure, Ruthie is still a stunner, regal despite her skimpy, flashy hooker attire, but she feels weary and therefore applies thicker makeup than she most likely once did. Responding to her daughter’s loving concern, Ruthie reluctantly agrees to the career switch.

Having known a deep mother’s love, Or is a happy, upbeat individual, working after school as a dishwasher in a neighbor’s restaurant and earning more extra money mopping the stairs in the building where she and her mother live in a small, cluttered apartment. Or’s spirits are especially high, what with her mother’s new life and the budding love Or is experiencing with the restaurant owner’s handsome son Ido (Meshar Cohen). Mother and daughter are especially close.

Such idylls rarely last. Ruthie quickly realizes that it’s going to be tough making ends meet as a cleaning woman and soon resumes turning tricks on the side, which in turn makes it harder to get up and go to work the next morning. Ruthie’s gradual slide into her old ways coincides with a glitch in Or’s romance that swiftly evolves into a fateful turning point in the lives of mother and daughter.

What concerns Yedaya most is how hard it is for individuals to think in ways that diverge from their conditioning. Or seems such a free spirit but really doesn’t question subservience to males any more than Ruthie (almost certainly fearful of being reflective in light of the downward trajectory of her life) considers the cumulative effect of her profession upon her daughter. The presence of a concerned high school counselor in Or’s life suggests the possibility of alternatives, but events conspire to cause Or to turn her back on the counselor.

“Or” is an affecting depiction of a loving, mutually sustaining bond between mother and daughter, which Elkabetz and Ivgy illuminate in myriad displays of kindness and concern, especially on Or’s part. But this exquisitely attuned film reveals above all how old attitudes and habits of behavior really do die hard in the face of harsh economic realities heightened by the sting of discrimination.

*

‘Or (My Treasure)’

MPAA rating: Unrated

Times guidelines: Strong adult themes and situations concerning prostitution; also nudity.

A Kino International release. Director Keren Yedaya. Producers Marek Rozenbaum, Itai Tamir, Emmanuel Agneray, Jerome Bleitrach. Screenplay Keren Yedaya and Sari Ezouz. Cinematographer Laurent Brunet. Editor Sari Ezouz. In Hebrew, with English subtitles. Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes.

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