Although the "hyperlink" drama that features a lot of interconnecting storylines has become a common staple of the arthouse, "Jellyfish" manages to be a weird and memorable creature all its own.
Comment
06/20/08
Jellyfish (2008)
86 %
Reviews Counted: 43 Fresh: 37 Rotten:6 Average Rating: 7.3/10
Consensus:
Lyrical, well-crafted and inventive, Jellyfish smartly mixes comedy, drama and magic realism.
Rated: Not Rated
Runtime: 78 mins
Theatrical Release: Apr 4, 2008 Limited
Synopsis: Winner of the Camera d'Or at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival, JELLYFISH (MEDUZOT) is a moving film that follows the travails of three women in modern-day Tel Aviv. Batya (Sarah Adler) is struggling to make ends meet, living in an apartment with a leaky ceiling and working for a wedding caterer,... [More]
Genre: Foreign Films
Starring: Sarah Adler, Nikol Leidman, Gera Sandler, Noa Knoller, Ma-nenita De Latorre
Director: Shira Geffen, Etgar Keret
Screenwriter: Shira Geffen
Composer: Christopher Bowen, Gregoire Hetzel
Screenwriter: Shira Geffen
Composer: Christopher Bowen, Gregoire Hetzel
Reviews
These interlocking stories don’t add up to a conventional narrative. It helps to think of Jellyfish as a tone poem. And like the invertebrate that is its namesake, the film is by turns beautiful, stinging and rather shapeless.
06/13/08
Light on its feet, deeply human, and fresh in style, this French-Israeli co-production serves up an engaging tale about a group of women struggling with daily life in contemporary Tel Aviv.
06/08/08
Most of the first hour passes without much more forward motion than its namesake. But in the corners and niches of that slow development, we get to know a handful of people, crisply drawn in fast sketches.
06/05/08
Top Critic
Shira Geffen's script is a poignant intersection of the regrettable past and the transitions that must occur to move on. In this 60th-year celebration of Israel, this film feels like the whole country.
06/03/08
What gives the film a haunting and sometimes droll poetic unity is the way co-directors Etgar Keret and Shira Geffen trace all their characters moving in a jellyfish-like fashion.
05/23/08
Top Critic
Provides a diverting portrait of modern-day Israel, as the filmmakers eschew history, politics and religion to focus instead on more intimate and universal issues of fate, loss and the longing to connect.
05/16/08
Top Critic
A brief, haunting tale of three women in contemporary Tel Aviv, Jellyfish seems to float in its viewers' consciousness; you'll remember its images long afterward.
05/16/08
These stories have as their justification that fact that they are intrinsically interesting. I think that's enough.
05/16/08
Top Critic
It has the modest scope of a short-story collection, with simply but vividly sketched characters that briefly glow within their tales.
05/15/08
A wonderfully complex exploration into people's attempts to control the fates and their own discovered strengths in the wake of illusory failure.
05/10/08
...an intricate weaving of the separate lives of its three [femme]principals. Their story is told with an intelligent understanding of the characters
05/02/08
While the scene announces the film's intensive focus on water -- a sign of transition, loss and rebirth -- it is also a sign of its stylized poetry, sometimes lovely, sometimes precious.
04/30/08
The film has a sense of the genial absurdity of life, a whimsical appreciation of the inescapable randomness of our anything-can-happen existence, of how fragile yet resilient are the bonds that draw people together.
04/25/08
Top Critic
A lot does go on in Jellyfish's slight 78 minutes, but it often feels more overdetermined than compelling.
04/25/08
Etgar Keret and Shira Geffen have made a mysterious film, full of existential anxiety, in which lonely people, all connected to the sea, find ways to repair their lives.
04/25/08
Top Critic
Like Amelie with an attitude, this sinister flick links strangers serendipitously, but with an almost shocking absence of naivete.
04/10/08
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