‘America’ Review: Unspoken Desire and Trauma Ripple the Surface of a Colorful, Affecting Israeli Melodrama
variety.comGuy Lodge Film Critic“America” is a burdensome title for Israeli director Ofir Raul Graizer’s bright, frangible new film, casting expectations of continent-sized import onto a more individual, interior study of immigrant unrest.
Visually iridescent and unexpectedly buoyant even when dealing with matters of plunging personal tragedy, this study of a Chicago-based swimming coach returning to his native Israel after his father’s death — setting off a chain of both present-tense misfortunes and disinterred traumas — braids blunt melodramatic storytelling with a softer, more searching look at conflicted identity, both cultural and sexual.
If the film isn’t always narratively credible, it’s sincerely felt to the last. “America” shares this appealing quality — as well as a few parallel plot points, and a quiet, diffident queerness — with Graizer’s 2017 debut “The Cakemaker,” and should resonate warmly with the same audience that made that film (selected as Israel’s international Oscar submission) an arthouse sleeper.
Once again, Graizer’s original script outlines a bisexual love triangle of sorts, albeit one where the participants are shy to recognize their affections, and where his previous film used the death of a common loved one to set events in motion, here it’s that most classic of melodramatic standbys — an extended coma — that serves the same purpose.
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