Band of Girls: Lavie’s Acerbic, Confident Debut
Exacerbated ennui is explored to comedic effect in Tayla Lavie’s striking directorial debut, Zero Motivation, which explores life on an Israeli military base through the perspective of several female soldiers. Groups of humans not taken seriously and treated with demeaning abandon tend to disengage from rational behaviors, and Lavie explores the rampant pettiness born out of being kept in certain positions without any opportunity to grow. Some have criticized Lavie for abstaining from composing the film as a more complicated and transgressive portrait of the reductive nature of war, in general. Coming from an area where cinematic offerings are saturated and inflected with the constant, aggravated unrest transpiring there, Lavie’s film is already a subtly wicked statement, and her focus on the trivialities of one group of women on one military base serves as the subtle microcosm for the enduring...
Exacerbated ennui is explored to comedic effect in Tayla Lavie’s striking directorial debut, Zero Motivation, which explores life on an Israeli military base through the perspective of several female soldiers. Groups of humans not taken seriously and treated with demeaning abandon tend to disengage from rational behaviors, and Lavie explores the rampant pettiness born out of being kept in certain positions without any opportunity to grow. Some have criticized Lavie for abstaining from composing the film as a more complicated and transgressive portrait of the reductive nature of war, in general. Coming from an area where cinematic offerings are saturated and inflected with the constant, aggravated unrest transpiring there, Lavie’s film is already a subtly wicked statement, and her focus on the trivialities of one group of women on one military base serves as the subtle microcosm for the enduring...
- 12/4/2014
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
A “Staple” Female-centric Portrait: Lavie Adds Dark Charm to Bureaucratic Military Milieu
With a subject so entrenched with weight and political correctness, there seems to be unspoken set of expectations that come with the territory of any narrative involving the testosterone and blood-drenched subjects of military, war, and combat. These expectations shape but also restrict the genre itself: as a romantic comedy is to the female audience, so is the war film to the male one. By creating a darkly comedic template and by utilizing a fully-fledged female ensemble, Talya Lavie artfully subverts such expectations in Zero Motivation, and by doing so, redefines the boundaries of the genre and the potential of its reach without sacrificing great storytelling.
At an isolated Israeli base camp in the middle of the desert, best friends Daffi (Nelly Tagar) and Zohar (Dana Ivgy) struggle to find their footing in a place that only seems...
With a subject so entrenched with weight and political correctness, there seems to be unspoken set of expectations that come with the territory of any narrative involving the testosterone and blood-drenched subjects of military, war, and combat. These expectations shape but also restrict the genre itself: as a romantic comedy is to the female audience, so is the war film to the male one. By creating a darkly comedic template and by utilizing a fully-fledged female ensemble, Talya Lavie artfully subverts such expectations in Zero Motivation, and by doing so, redefines the boundaries of the genre and the potential of its reach without sacrificing great storytelling.
At an isolated Israeli base camp in the middle of the desert, best friends Daffi (Nelly Tagar) and Zohar (Dana Ivgy) struggle to find their footing in a place that only seems...
- 12/4/2014
- by Amanda Yam
- IONCINEMA.com
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