Jellyfish (Keret and Geffen, 2007) was co-directed by Etgar Keret and his wife Shira Geffen, who also wrote the film. Now out on DVD, this small wonder, which won the Golden Camera prize at Cannes, deserves to be discovered. Jellyfish consists of a trio of stories about women in Israel—Batya (Sarah Adler), a young waitress who takes care of a silent 5-year-old she meets; Keren (Noa Knoller), a newlywed, who is holed up in a hotel when she breaks her leg; and Joy (Ma-nenita De Latorre) is a Filipino caregiver who misses her young son.

Keret, a successful short story writer in Israel, spoke with Film International about Jellyfish and how he and his wife developed the film.

 

GK: What prompted you to transition from writing to filmmaking?

EK: This had a lot to do with the tradition of Israeli cinema, it’s very hyper-realistic—it’s all specific to date and time—there is no sense of fantasy or abstractness, like the screenplay. I was curious about [doing] it, rather than proving my craftsmanship…I write for films to collaborate with people. Writing is much more independent and focused. When you read a book you always know who the writer is. In a film, some [people] don’t know who directed it. What made me want to work more in film was to collaborate with people. I like collaboration, and the way partners create a relationship—it helps breaks the solitude of writing.

GK: You feature three very different women in Israel in Jellyfish. What prompted you to create these characters? How do you relate to their experiences?

EK: I think Shira chose three characters she could identify with, that are very closely connected to her life story. But I'd feel strange to elaborate about that. It would be a little like telling a secret.

GK: What I love is that you provide mysteries and histories to characters viewers meet only briefly. This adds depth to your near-minimalist film. Can you discuss how you approached each character small and large?

EK: As a storyteller, when I work with actors by telling them stories about their characters. It wasn’t, “Your work is this,” it was almost like fables. When we worked with the policeman, he was used to working like, “What’s my pay, and do I hate my boss?” We said, “You are a giant living in your cave and you are lonely, and you do everything to keep them in it.” This way, we worked with the actors, by having me telling them stories about themselves. I told the wedding hall manager that he was a racist British Colonialist in India. Through storytelling you can legitimize [behavior]. We wanted the characters not to be psychologically complete, but to have a full and complete story.

GK: I thought there were many creative elements at work in the film. The production of Hamlet was imaginative. The wedding photos are unique and offbeat, and a poem that plays a central role in one storyline was heartbreaking. How did you create these elements, and what inspired/influenced/prompted you to include them and tie them together?
EK: Basically, the photos are by Rona Ayafman an Israeli photographer who shoots weddings for a living. For Hamlet, the choice came from the person who performed it—she’s a performing poet we love. She did it with Hamlet as a monologue. She took a play and completely alienated it. She would say everything 15 times. Some people see it in the film and wonder how we made a grotesque fucked-up Hamlet. We didn’t do anything that was stupid, or untalented or bad.

 

GK: My favorite scene may be when the husband tells his bride about how he has been bending to her whims since their first date. The poem they share is beautiful. Was that something based on your life with Shira?

EK: In some sense, the bride was Shira and I was the guy. She wrote it out of self-criticism, and I directed it and made it that she was too hard on herself. I like that you are being led, and my wife is a poet, and she wrote it like poetry and people hate the characters others love, and some people connect with one story, not another, There are arguments about the film and what happened—who wrote the end of the poem. It is open to interpretation.

GK: The characters in Jellyfish are often paralyzed to speak—Batya in the first scene, or with the little girl, or in the bride’s story, the line, “I can’t find the words to express my emotions.” Was this lack of communication the germ, or framework for the film?

EK: Shira and I are both fiction writers and as writers you continuously confront the limitations of words as expression tools. Every story I've ever written is a minor failure to express something in a more accurate way than I was able to.

GK: The story is about three stages of life: youth/childhood, marriage, and aging/death. Why did you conceive the stories to reflect these facets of life?

EK: When Shira wrote the screenplay she thought that she wanted to show that the problems that engulf the human condition are something we don't grow up from, they just transform themselves. The idea to have people in different stages of their lives tackling the same kind of problems of miscommunication was one of the things that led to her choice of stories.

GK: Keren the bride is especially sensitive—she smells sewage, hears traffic, tastes a rotten apple…Touch is important in the story of Joy and her charge Malka, and sight/seeing is prominent in Batya’s story. Why did you incorporate all five senses? Was that deliberate?

EK: I never thought of that. But now that you say that it makes sense. I guess the film is all about the wish to connect and we connect through our different senses.

GK: Can you discuss the use of the song “La Vie en Rose” in the film? Why that selection, and why was it used repeatedly in the film?

EK: We wanted to use a song which you'll hear in the beginning of the film and in its end but that the experience the characters had gone through will make it sound different in those two times. In the first time it is a song of love, the second time you listen more to its more painful aspect—at least I do. [Songs] always talk about something that is bigger than life and, maybe, the inherent failure to contain it, and this seemed to fit our film.

GK: There are several promises in the film—the ice cream man, the ship, and the bond between the newlyweds. Why do you feel promises are so important to keep?

EK: I think that the thing about promises and the difficulties of keeping them is what we want and what we have. My fiction is optimism and sadness, and that is very natural. When you are an optimist you promise yourself things will get better, and most of the time they don’t, which creates the sadness. Life is not what we expect it to be, but there is goodness in it.

GK: Is the beach in Tel Aviv really covered with dog shit and jellyfish as one character claims?

EK: You can find many [jellyfish], and yet, there weren’t any in the season we shot. So we had to manufacture a plastic one, which wasn’t really good. And on the day of shooting someone found a jellyfish and it was switched to a real one in the last moment.

GK: Why did you call the film Jellyfish?

EK: We called it Jellyfish because the characters are being swept by the current of life, like jellyfish. Some of them will be able to turn to fish that can swim against the current and others will find themselves being swept to the shore.

GK: As a short story writer, what titles would you give to each of the three tales?

EK: As a writer, I always felt that my weakest point was finding titles and I always pester my friends for suggestions. Can you help me out?

Contributor details

Gary M. Kramer is a freelance writer and film critic. He is the author of Independent Queer Cinema: Reviews and Interviews.

 

 

Production credits

Jellyfish, (2007)

Israel/France

Directed by Etgar Kerret & Shira Geffen Screenplay Shira Geffen Cinematography Antoine Héberlé Sound Gil Toren, Oliver Dô Hùu, Aviv Aldema Editing François Gédigier, Sasha Franklin Production Design Avi Fahima Music Christopher Bowen Produced by Lama Films & Les Films du Poisson

Runtime 78 minutes

In Hebrew with English subtitles

Color

With Sarah Adler (Batya), Nikol Leidman (The little girl), Gera Sandler (Michael), Noa Knoller (Keren), Ma-nenita De Latorre (Joy), Zharira Charifai (Malka)

DVD: USA, 2008 Distributed by Zeitgeist Films Aspect ratio 1.85:1 original theatrical aspect ratio Sound Dolby SRD Extras New anamorphic master, enhanced for widescreen televisions. Video interview with filmmakers Etgar Keret and Shira Geffen. U.S. Theatrical Trailer. Optional English subtitles. Filmmaker Statement.