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Israel, Belgium, France · 2005
1h 30m
Director Amos Gitai
Starring Natalie Portman, Hana Laslo, Hiam Abbass, Carmen Maura
Genre Drama
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Rebecca, an American living in Jerusalem, gets into a cab driven by Hanna, an Israeli. But Hanna is on her way to Jordan, to the Free Zone, to pick up a large sum of money that "the American", her husband's partner, owes them. Rebecca persuades Hanna to take her along for the journey.
A road picture mired by unsteady camera work, lackadaisical pacing and cumbersome speechmaking, Free Zone is an excruciating cinematic trek. Israeli director Amos Gitai's narrative, both visually and conversationally, is a disappointing dud.
Gitai's experimental technique in Free Zone is dizzying, sometimes thrilling.
Amos Gitai's most satisfying pic since war drama "Kippur." Schematic set-up is given a human face by fine performances and a physical journey that's often more interesting than the characters' emotional ones, which are weakened by the Israeli auteur's tendency toward convenient doctrinaire-ism and chunks of expository dialogue.
Despite a provocative climax, the movie settles into a ponderous collection of soliloquies.
New York Daily News by Jack Mathews
The movie works best as a car's-eye travelogue of Jordan. And the three women might be good company on another, less stressful trip. Say to the Caribbean.
Village Voice by Jessica Winter
Oddly, in representing a private conflict as the microcosm of an unsolvable catastrophe, Free Zone only manages to miniaturize both.
Unfortunately, the characters feel more like symbols than people, despite strong performances, including what might be Portman's finest work to date.
Like a lot of Gitaï's films, Free Zone is part history, part allegory, and part art. Both the history and art hold their fascinations.
The New York Times by Stephen Holden
If the strong performances of its three stars infuse this metaphorically clotted movie with some life, the screenplay (some of which was improvised) has a weak narrative pulse. This political essay posing as a movie makes the mistake of confusing longwinded storytelling with compelling drama.
The three women deliver solid performances, but the film is diluted by the use of flashbacks superimposed over present-time scenes. The result is visual chaos.
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