S#x Acts

With its broad, ambiguous title, S#x Acts reminds us, with heartbreaking power, that sometimes vigilance just isn't enough, and all it takes is an "act" or two to change a life forever.

Tautly written by Rona Segal and expertly observed by Jonathan Gurfinkel, a documentarian and TV producer who worked on the hilarious Israeli satire Eretz Nehederet, S#x Acts operates almost exclusively at the behavioral level. Suspended between titillation and despair, the movie firmly implicates us in its voyeurism.

Probably a lot of people who see this film will get fed up with Gili's passivity, but some people in life are passive in a way that feels like a defiantly inactive reaction to ill treatment. These boys don't view her as a person with feelings, but Gurfinkel's film does.

The movie’s observations of the wolf pack mentality of privileged teenage boys who view every conquest as proof of their prowess is casually devastating.

In its refusal to bring an easy understanding to its main character's behavior, it comes dangerously close to presenting her as a willing perpetrator in her own victimhood.

S#x Acts works as a crash course in sexual ethics, but it also fails to transcend its genre trappings as a morality tale about the dangers of low self-esteem.

Perhaps Gurfinkel means to suggest a society off-course, but the game feels rigged, his conception of male and female roles so limited that the characters have little choice but to fall in line.