Five Hours from Paris (2009)

Don't listen to the negative reviews

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Why is this a good film? Because it shows a slice of life as it really is, without any sugar coating, without dei ex machinas, without makeup, without resorting to Hollywood-style happy endings.Yes. This is life. We've all been there (at least this writer has), and life hurts. Brushing against a different future and then seeing it disappear into thin air is one of the most painful feelings in life. The rest of your life will be spent with "what ifs" and "what-might-have- beens". Depressing, I know. I'm sorry.Dror Keren as Yigal the cab driver gives a subdued yet true-to-life performance as a loser, financially as well as romantically, and makes us feel for him. Cheer up, mate. We empathize with you. Things will not get any better, but you're not alone (not that it eases the pain).

There's a lot to like about this movie. The plot is realistic and well-written. The sound track is unusual (mostly Joe Dassin) but oddly pleasant the way it's woven into the movie. It's the music that starts the connection between Lena and Yigal. Best of all is the acting. Vladimir Freedman as Grisha looks a little rough for me to want him as my doctor but conveys the wronged husband well. Dror Keren as Yigal is magnificent as someone that everybody uses but finally finds himself and his backbone. The real star is Elena Yaralova as Lena. Her agony as she chooses between her husband and her lover is the clue that the movie will not have a happy ending. Elena Yaralova is not a plastic beauty but more like what the young boys in her music class are looking for in an older woman.I might have given given this movie a 10 but I'm more than a little annoyed at the letter from the Canadian Embassy that makes Canada look as if it's populated coast to coast by illiterates. I might have let that pass but how many times do Israelis need to mention that Canada is COLD. Grisha and Lena are headed to Vancouver, after all and they don't even put on snow tires in that city.This is a movie worth watching, even if you're Canadian.

Yigal is impressed with the talent of his son's music teacher at the piano, and he asks why she didn't set about making much more of herself in the world. "I wasn't good enough," she says. It's an admirable line. Besides giving evidence of modesty, it hints that there is warmth and emotion inside her that, since she will not be channeling it into musical creativity, Yigal might release from her in a romantic relationship. Unfortunately, she already has a husband. The "wasn't good enough" pianist and the obstructive husband will be more familiar to Israeli audiences from "Restoration," a more recent film from one of the same writers, Erez Kav-El. And oddly, the character of Yigal-- a man of no great accomplishment whose discomfort with his own timidity drives him to seek professional help, and who then tries to pry himself out of timidity with the help of a woman who, he then discovers, cannot become his companion as readily as he'd hoped-- will remind viewers exactly of Meir the meek librarian in the movie "The Matchmaker." The same actor, Dror Keren, must have started work as Meir almost the moment he finished playing Yigal in this movie. But the relationship is a mere subplot in those two more prominent movies, and it is the core of this one. Dror Keren arouses great sympathy. The music teacher he loves is enigmatic, and sufficiently beautiful without being unrealistic. Her husband is no pushover, but (unlike the one in "Restoration," where the same plot goes by more sketchily) he is no ogre either. For Anglophone viewers who are sticklers, there is one disappointment in this otherwise charming and affecting movie. In one scene, a letter comes in from the Canadian embassy and is briefly visible on the screen, and it is woefully obvious that the filmmakers did not want to spend ten dollars-- or thought it wasn't important anyway-- to have the letter typed by someone who actually knows English.

In a working-class suburb of Tel Aviv, Yigal, a divorced taxi driver (Dror Keren) works with a psychologist to conquer his fear of flying so he can go to Paris for his son's bar mitzvah. He meets Lina (Helena Yaralova), a Russian former concert pianist who teaches music at his son's school. But she is a married woman on the brink of leaving Israel to join her husband Grisha in Canada. So when Grisha (Vladimir Friedman) returns, Lina must make some difficult choices...I have rarely seen such a charming movie coming from Israel. Not that Israeli cinema isn't charming, but what we usually get here (in France) is pretty heavy serious stuff, i.e. politically engaged films or "movies-with-a-message". "Five Hours from Paris" is a sweet and delightful little film which brought a breeze of fresh air in the cinema theater where I sat to watch it. The two main characters are absolutely adorable (Dror Keren, you have a fan here!) and director Leonid Prudovsky has written a delicate romantic comedy which is almost like real life. The actors may be not very famous and the setting not really exceptional, yet this film is really endearing, for it delivers quite a simple and warm message: yes, two seemingly different people can grow together and open to love.I guess I was lucky I could enjoy this film at a nearby theater, for a French chain of art cinemas removed "Five hours from Paris" from scheduling last month (June 2010) in light of Israel's involvement in the Gaza flotilla raid. Let me state here that it was a shameful decision, for there is nothing in "Five Hours from Paris" that could raise your eyebrows. It is on the contrary quite a universal and tender movie. Besides, censoring romantic comedies like this one is clearly not the right answer to the world's great disorder. Under the pretext that this film has the Israeli nationality, it is penalized -- but have we ever censored singer Miriam Makeba when there was apartheid in South Africa? (To be fair and honest, I have to mention that under the media and public pressure, the French chain of art cinemas eventually changed its decision.) I hope that those foolish considerations won't keep anyone away from this little and francophile treat. "Francophile?" Oh yes, I forgot to mention that in spite of the mix of Russian and Hebrew you hear throughout the whole movie, it had a familiar taste to me as it is full of French songs from the 60s (I admit that Joe Dassin's songs are probably the most dangerous things in the film).