100
Christian Science Monitor by David Sterritt
Yedaya's prizewinning debut film is acted and directed with uncommon psychological realism.
Or (My Treasure) (Or)
Critic Rating
(read reviews)User Rating
- France,
- Israel
- 2004
- · 95m
Cast
Ronit Elkabetz,
Dana Ivgy,
Meshar Cohen,
Katia Zinbris,
Shmuel Edelman
Genre
Drama
Or shoulders a lot: she's 17 or 18, a student, works evenings at a restaurant, recycles cans and bottles for cash, and tries to keep her mother Ruthie from returning to streetwalking in Tel Aviv. Ruthie calls Or "my treasure," but Ruthie is a burden. She's just out of hospital, weak, and Or has found her a job as a house cleaner. The call of the quick money on the street is tough for Ruthie to ignore. Or's emotions roil further when the mother of the youth she's in love with comes to the flat to warn her off. With love fading and Ruthie perhaps beyond help, Or's choices narrow.
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What are critics saying?
88
New York Post by V.A. Musetto
Like mother, like daughter best sums up Or (My Treasure), a raw drama.
83
Seattle Post-Intelligencer by Sean Axmaker
Yedaya is respectful and sensitive of everyone in Or's life and creates a beautiful, complex and rich relationship between mother and daughter, loving and protective of each other, but not of themselves.
80
Variety by Lisa Nesselson
Consistently engaging, non-judgmental and cumulatively powerful two-hander marks a noteworthy feature debut for Israeli helmer Keren Yedaya.
70
Los Angeles Times by Kevin Thomas
A work of exceptional subtlety and is all the more captivating and heart-rending for being so.
70
Chicago Reader by Jonathan Rosenbaum
Insofar as they're implicitly the spoils of war, this movie seems to be meditating on the whys and hows of the spoiling process -- raising more questions than can possibly be answered, and in this sense, at least, far from dogmatic.
70
The A.V. Club by Keith Phipps
For long stretches, Or is a dialogue-heavy kitchen-sink drama, but its naturalistic style and unselfconscious performances give it an intensity that only builds as it progresses.
70
TV Guide Magazine by Ken Fox
Israeli director Keren Yedaya's remarkable debut feature, which won the 2004 Cannes Film Festival Camera d'Or, is a powerful study of a teenager's willingness to do anything to save her mother, a Tel Aviv prostitute who may be well beyond salvation.
60
Village Voice by Jessica Winter
The scoreless Or (My Treasure) consists solely of stationary shots that, while sometimes awkwardly composed, build in organic momentum and bracing detail.
50
The New York Times by Manohla Dargis
This well-meaning but irritatingly naïve feature delves into the horrors of prostitution, or more accurately, the filmmaker's horror about the subject.
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