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Israel · 2012
Rated PG · 1h 30m
Director Rama Burshtein
Starring Hadas Yaron, Yiftach Klein, Renana Raz, Irit Sheleg
Genre Drama
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Shira is the youngest daughter of the Mendelman family, and she's about to be married off to a promising young man of the same age and background. After her sister's unexpected death, the pain and grief that overwhelm the family postpones Shira's promised match. When a match is proposed to Esther's late husband and the girls' mother finds out that Yochay may move to Belgium with her only grandchild, she proposes a match between Shira and the widower. Shira will have to choose between her heart's wish and her family duty.
Burshtein shoots in extreme shallow focus, framing her actors against a sometimes-blinding blanket of white fuzz. It’s a decision that, coupled with Yitzhak Azulay’s stirring, chant-driven score, lends each conversation a near religious aura.
The New York Times by A.O. Scott
What the film makes clear, with unfailing sensitivity and wry humor, is that for Shira and her family the ordinary arrangements of living are freighted with moral and spiritual significance.
Slant Magazine by Andrew Schenker
The film unfolds in unhurried dramatic terms that come to take on an almost fatalistic force.
Burshtein's lush visual sensibility, and the subtle performances of the excellent cast, create an aching portrayal of longing and interdependence that transcends the boundaries of the family's small world.
Burshtein refuses to engage with the culture wars that flare fiercely between secular and religious types in Israel; in fact she's trying to avoid types of any kind, which may be why secular audiences and critics have embraced her rapturous depiction of a community living its life, more separate from than at odds with the society beyond.
New York Post by Farran Smith Nehme
Trouble is, while the social milieu is nicely realized, other parts of the drama are not. Too often Burshtein cuts off a scene prematurely, darting away just as the crucial moment of emotion or confrontation appears.
Fill the Void is, in the worst sense of the word, a “women’s picture,” in which people wring their hands and worry, wail and weep over marriage and maintaining the status quo.
The film isn’t exactly rousing in its conclusion, but it’s always respectful: a serious ethical inquiry into matters of women’s choice, both imposed and seized upon. Check it out.
Los Angeles Times by Kenneth Turan
A transfixing, emotionally complex Israeli drama.
The Playlist by Oliver Lyttelton
Burshtein has devoted most of the last 20 years teaching and making film in that world, but here makes her international feature debut with a curious comedy-drama that has its strengths, but ultimately proves somewhat disappointing.
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