What’s truly heartbreaking throughout the first 20 minutes of interaction between Dovid, Ronit and Esti, is the fact that each one of them wants to desperately connect with the other but they don’t know how, or if they’re supposed to.
Dovid wants to comfort Ronit for her loss ,it is there, you can feel it in the way he helps her light her cigarette with his hands, the way he nods with his gentle, knowing smile, like he’s whispering “i get you, i understand”.
It’s like there’s this huge time jump that brings us back to the old days where rules and musts weren’t a one way, because kids are still allowed a dose of freedom , crafting themselves for their future reflections.
Ronit’s family is a ghost of memories full of bitterness and unacceptance . She chose to forget because sometimes numbness is better. She burned all her bridges and run away like a wounded animal.
New place, new people and a fervid need for attachment, because how do you survive this sense of not belonging? You always, always need to grasp on to something.It ‘s in the human nature.
With no home, no mother or father to connect her to the past anymore Ronit is pleading Dovid and Esti.
Hug me. Miss me. I am back.Do you want me back?
How many times did Ronit ask Esti if she wants her in the house,if she needs to change her tickets, to go back to her world where she’s accepted, where she feels safe.
A tired provocateur begging for reassurance, bold and witty and so very lost.
“Come, let us talk, the three of us like we used to be”.
Poor Ronit. Her craving is so palpable but Dovid and Esti are so very broken. Their dysfunctionality as a couple catapults back to Ronit who is just standing there, in the kitchen or the attic trying to understand.
“Was this marriage good for you?”
Not a hint of irony. It was an honest question.
And then their faces. The two perfect opposites. Dovid smiling, completely delusional, because what else is left to do? And Esti.
Where to begin and where to end with Esti.
Always calm and reserved, her life a social obligation because she must.
She must this, and she must that and she. must .
She will bite her lips and grit her teeth and show anger and bitterness and hollowness to Ronit because she left fourteen years ago, and since then Esti ceased to exist.
How do you breathe the same air under the same roof after so many years, after so much pain, how is it possible for Ronit to be back?
It is actually painful to observe Esti’s reactions and decipher the feelings or how Ronit perceives them.
Because at first, Ronit doesn’t get it. She feels that something is off, because this is not her Esti.
There’s a big difference between them.In those fourteen years Ronit managed to get a hold of her life. Her choice to leave everything behind was not easy but eventually she did make a choice.
Esti is not really there. All this time it’s like she postponed this, what she always knew, and this small tiny motion- to contact Ronit to come back for her father- set everything on fire. It was the first awakening.
“what? Do I look old? i’m tired. I’m just tired”
Oh Esti.So fragile, Ronit could probably crush her with her nail.A halfdead fish struggling to stay alive.
And those were just the first 20 minutes of the film.
Imagine if I started analyzing the whole thing.
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