Jewish International Film Festival: Asia

Often the simplest stories, when told with honesty and grace, are the most powerful. 

Asia, 2020 Israeli film directed by Ruthy Pribar, is a coming-of-age drama about a mother and a daughter manoeuvring through their troubled relationship and the difficulties of life. Living in Jerusalem and working as a nurse in a hospital, Asia (Alena Yiv) is caught between wanting to recapture her youth and freedom, and being a mother to her 17-year-old daughter Vika (Shira Haas). Like two ships passing in the night, they go about their lives separately, emotionally alienated from one other, with Vika deigning to engage in monosyllable conversation only when completely necessary. However, they are clouded by a heartbreaking truth – Vika has a terminal motor neurone disease that could accelerate at any moment. Though a simple narrative, Pribar’s graceful and unexaggerated filmmaking and the realistic humanism of the characters makes this a poignant tale of life, death and the female experience. 

With Vika’s illness looming over them like a black cloud, both Asia and Vika are in denial and the distance between them grows. Vika, attempting to maintain some semblance of teenage normalcy, spends her days hanging out at skate parks with boys, drinking, taking drugs, and trying to ignore the slow degradation of her body. Asia, in between working long hours, frequents the late-night party scene and engages in an affair with a married doctor. A memorable moment is when Asia tries to ‘treat’ Vika to a weekend away at a resort, and the absence of their emotional synchronicity reaches its peak. Though a cliched arc in a mother-daughter character relationship, it doesn’t feel as such, and this is attributed to the sophisticated performances from both actors. Shira Haas – recently renowned for her leading role in the Netflix mini-series Unorthodox – brings a quiet intensity to the character of Vika, simultaneously encapsulating both the sickly teenager and powerful female that she is.

Eventually, Vika’s condition worsens to a point when the women must painfully face the reality of her fate. Confronted with her rapid physical breakdown, the film delves deeper into observations of time and death as Vika and Asia find themselves growing closer, bridging their emotional gap, and finally dealing with their hapless situation as a family. Quiet and touching moments between them enrich the second half of the film, such as Asia putting makeup on her now completely paralysed daughter, or the two of them laying close in Vika’s hospital bed, talking openly about love and sex. Again, these are typical tropes for their characters, but it only adds to the gentle charm of it all. 

Though Asia was predictable and formulaic – hitting plot points and character developments like a paint by numbers – it wasn’t at all to it’s detriment. Rather, its stripped-back, no-frills take on the human experience allows room for a liberating and honest intimacy to permeate the story. Asia was real throughout, capturing the universal intensity of female relationships and the inescapable truth of life and death.

Asia is screening at the Jewish International Film Festival and screening at Classic Cinemas, Elsternwick and Lido Cinemas, Hawthorn.

Jewish International Film Festival 
Till Sunday 25 April 2021
jiff.com.au