Close to Home

The film is much more subversive for treading back and forth between the political and the personal, the Arab and the Israeli points of view.

Filmmakers Vardit Bilu and Dalia Hagar don't seem as interested in taking sides as they do in exploring universal themes.

Sayar and Schnendar are likeable performers, and if Bilu and Hager had pushed the "private school for girls" side of Close To Home a little harder, they could have had a sharp satire on their hands. Instead, it's all played straight and close to the surface.

The movie, written and directed by Vidi Bilu and Dalia Hager, is really a study of people coping with excruciating boredom and the absurd aspects of military life.

Mixes humor, tragedy, tenderness and political acumen into a well-observed coming-of-age format.

This movie just seems like a scattered excuse to make political points without saying much of anything. Worse, it also fails to show us, with any vividness, how Mirit and Smadar think and feel as women.

Though it clearly means to call into question the legitimacy of their work, the movie is formlessly episodic as it meanders from one day to the next, finally losing itself in a forest of coming-of-age clichés.