Reviews

Close to Home

Absorbing, informative

By NINA MACLAUGHLIN | February 28, 2007

2.5 Stars

The front lines are not on battlefields but on buses, street corners, and crowded Jerusalem marketplaces in this drama from Dalia Hagar and Vardit Bilu. And the soldiers here are not men but two young Israeli women serving their required two-year term. Close to Home examines the tedium, the mindlessness, and the repetition of military service as snitchy, angel-faced do-gooder Mirit (Neama Shendar) and defiant, cocky rebel Smadar (Smadar Sayar, a dark-haired, dark-eyed Chloë Sevigny look-alike) patrol a sector of Jerusalem, checking Palestinian IDs. The film gets off to a slow start, and the relationship between the two young women runs a predictable course: they hate each other; they tolerate each other; they’re united by trauma and danger. But the on-street-level feel and the impact these two girls — who talk about haircuts and hats and cute boys — have on the safety of the city inform and absorb.

Topics: Reviews , Armed Forces, War and Conflict, Chloe Sevigny

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[ 05/26 ] "A Natural Order," photographs by Lucas Foglia @ David Winton Bell Gallery

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[ 05/26 ] "2012 RISD Graduate Thesis Exhibition" @ Rhode Island Convention Center

ARTICLES BY NINA MACLAUGHLIN

ON CARPENTRY AND COLLEGE | October 20, 2011
Age 30, I quit the Phoenix and ended up with a job as an apprentice to a carpenter. Sawing, chiseling, hammering, nail-gunning, tiling, sanding, slotting, framing, hauling, measuring, and sweeping are less obvious outcomes of an undergraduate career in the liberal arts. College, in strange and unexpected ways, prepared me for this sort of work. And in others, did not prepare me at all.

PHDISASTERS | April 27, 2011
I knew a man pursuing a PhD in literature. His dissertation had to do with humor as a form of dissent in 20th-century literature. And how enthused he was at first! How passionate and excited.

DAVID FOSTER WALLACE'S THE PALE KING | April 13, 2011
All I can do is tell you how I read the book.

THE HOUSE THAT HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG BUILT | February 25, 2011
Andre Dubus III collected me at the Newburyport train station last month when the snow piles were already high. We stopped first for a coffee for the road; he asked all the questions: siblings, hometown, are you married?

DON'T BE AN IDIOT | January 27, 2011
We're all idiots when we're 18. We're all idiots for the first half of our 20s, and longer, for some. By saying so, we're not trying to insult anyone.