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Israel · 2013
1h 40m
Director Jonathan Gurfinkel
Starring Sivan Levy, Eviatar Mor, Roy Nik, Niv Zilberberg
Genre Drama
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Determined to gain social status at her new high school, Gili hooks up with the coolest guy there. Their encounter marks the start of her many other sexual favors. But as Gili pushes her limits with more and more boys, she begins to question if it is all happening to her consent.
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.
Slant Magazine by Andrew Schenker
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.
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.
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.
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.
The New York Times by Stephen Holden
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.
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