Asia

The frail bond between a young moth­er, Asia (Ale­na Yiv), and her 17-year-old daugh­ter, Vika (Shi­ra Haas), is strength­ened and enhanced dur­ing this sen­si­tive domes­tic dra­ma by Israli direc­tor Ruthy Prib­ar. Asia is a nurse and sin­gle moth­er who gave birth to her daugh­ter at a young age. As such, she still yearns to have a full and event­ful pri­vate life, and so when she tells Vika she’s work­ing a night shift, that usu­al­ly means she down the dis­cothèque neck­ing boil­er­mak­ers and romp­ing with mar­ried col­leagues in cars.

Mean­while, the reserved, angu­lar Vika doss­es around in skateparks and has reached the point where she’s ready to dip her toe into the warm water of boys, soft drugs and booze. The pair are a lit­tle like ships in the night, occa­sion­al­ly pass­ing one anoth­er in their dim­ly lit apart­ment, shar­ing a few duti­ful grunts and idle pleas­antries. Asia clear­ly doesn’t want to be a moth­er, while Vika seems to cher­ish not hav­ing to endure the swad­dling con­fines of tra­di­tion­al fam­i­ly life.

Then comes the twist, and it’s revealed that Vika has a degen­er­a­tive dis­or­der whose symp­toms have tak­en hold right at the point where life is sup­posed to get inter­est­ing. With a min­i­mum of fuss, Asia becomes nurse­maid to her ail­ing off­spring and, as a result, the pair begin to realise that they have more in com­mon than they thought, and their love for one anoth­er begins to blos­som anew. It is a film which sees care­giv­ing as the ulti­mate expres­sion of sin­cere com­pas­sion, and it argues its case well.

If this reads like a cheesy, made-for-TV melo­dra­ma, then that couldn’t be fur­ther from the truth: direc­tor Prib­ar tamps down the nat­ur­al hys­te­ria of such a sit­u­a­tion and presents it as one of life’s nat­ur­al process­es, albeit an extreme­ly melan­choly one. Vika’s con­di­tion forces a new kind of inti­ma­cy between the pair, though the actors nev­er push things too far to milk unearned sen­ti­men­tal wins.

Even though its stripped-back, ultra-func­tion­al nature as well as the sim­plic­i­ty of its exe­cu­tion don’t real­ly offer much that is new or excit­ing, it’s a mod­el of rigour when it comes to this sub­tle, less-is-more mode of dra­mat­ic filmmaking.