Reviewed - Live and Become/Va, Vis et Deviens: In the course of this long, deeply felt drama, the Romanian director Radu Mihaileanu uses one boy's story to illuminate several aspects of the social history of Israel over the past two decades.
The picture begins with the mass immigration of Ethiopian Jews to the country during the African famines of the mid-1980s. The young protagonist, later known as Schlomo, is persuaded by his Christian mother to attach himself to a Jewish woman and take advantage of the airlift. Shortly after he arrives in Israel, his new "mother" now dead, the bemused Ethiopian is adopted by a decent liberal couple. Over the coming years, he experiences racism, falls in love with a girl of conservative parents, studies medicine in Paris and, eventually, makes his way back to Africa.
Featuring steady, thoughtful performances from three equally impressive actors as the growing protagonist, the film uses a stranger's eye to pinpoint notable facets of Israeli society. Here, in a country formed to shelter the oppressed, African Jews are, themselves, often treated with an aggressive contempt. Schlomo's adoptive grandfather, whose open decency is easily accommodated in such a liberal picture, gently makes the case for sharing land with one's neighbours. Gradually - a little too gradually perhaps - Mihaileanu allows Schlomo develop an idea of himself as a man of two nationalities.
The most powerful sections of the film concern the young Schlomo's attempts to shake off the trauma of his early years. When he has his first shower, he panics at the sight of the water pouring down the plughole. After being restrained from futile attempts to stop the fluid draining, he is told: "Don't worry, we have plenty of water in Israel." Later on Live and Become (the last words Schlomo hears from his birthmother) does take on the quality of an underpowered soap opera.
Perhaps the film-makers believe that worthy intentions can excuse narrative slackness. This may be so, but nothing can justify the melodramatic denouement, which manages to be hopelessly unlikely and poundingly inevitable at the same time.
