Club Fattoush is a real-life bar and arts space in the Israeli port city of Haifa: a kind of bohemian, liberal-minded gathering point for a broad array of residents, be they Israeli or Palestinian, Jewish or Arabic, gay or straight, and so on. Veteran Haifa-born filmmaker Amos Gitai is sufficiently enamored of the venue to have made a feature-length fictional celebration of its diversity and cultural import. Enter “Laila in Haifa,” a spaghetti pile of connected and disconnected narrative strands, revolving around a series of Fattoush employees and patrons over a single evening of business. It’s enough to convince you to drop into the place should you ever find yourself in town: It’d almost certainly offer a better time than “Laila in Haifa,” which, for all its good intentions and social interests, is among Gitai’s most listless films, not even propped up by his usual formal rigor.
- 9/8/2020
- by Guy Lodge
- Variety Film + TV
IMDb.com, Inc. takes no responsibility for the content or accuracy of the above news articles, Tweets, or blog posts. This content is published for the entertainment of our users only. The news articles, Tweets, and blog posts do not represent IMDb's opinions nor can we guarantee that the reporting therein is completely factual. Please visit the source responsible for the item in question to report any concerns you may have regarding content or accuracy.