Two 18-year old female Israeli soldiers, polar opposites in personality, patrol a section of Jerusalem from morning until night, stopping every Palestinian they see on the street, asking for their ID, and recording the information on a government form. At checkpoints, Arab women must strip down to their underwear while a metal detector scans their bodies, their purses are searched, their makeup x-rayed, and food designed for their children is confiscated. Now in limited release, Close to Home, a film directed by two former Israeli soldiers, Dalia Hager and Vidi Bilu, examines the Israeli occupation, portraying a generation forced to perform invasive military tasks in the name of a state security system they seem barely committed to. Indeed the film suggests that both sides now feel powerless to bring to an end the constant insecurity, the terrorist threats, and the harassment.
At a border crossing, an Israeli soldier named Dana tells everyone to stop searching and go home. "I don't believe in it", she declares but Dana is put in prison for her rebellion and the film shifts elsewhere. Smadar (Smadar Sayar), an abrasive nonconformist has been placed in a unit with Mirit (Neama Shendar), an earnest young woman who takes her duties seriously, so seriously in fact that she is known as "the squealer", someone who reports fellow soldiers who slack off during patrol. The two are under orders not to socialize, smoke, eat, talk on a cellphone, or go shopping except during two half hour breaks but Smadar routinely breaks these rules as do other girls who alert each other on their cell phones whenever their superiors are in the area.
Mirit apologizes to a man whose misplaced ID card causes him to miss his bus and perhaps lose his job but Smadar calls her a moron for apologizing. Mirit barely tolerates Smadar's disdain of authority but things change slowly when a terrorist bomb goes off in their section and Mirit barely escapes injury. Mirit tries to be more like Smadar to the point where she is arrested and put in prison for one week for leaving her post to go dancing with a sleazy pick up while guarding a hotel. Smadar visits her in jail and gives her a gift of a hat she had been eyeing through a store window but Mirit rejects her overtures of friendship.
They slowly become friends, however, and then become enemies, then friends again, mimicking the clichés of cop-buddy movies. The film then chooses to focus on their growing closeness and "coming of age" rituals such as chasing boys and budding romances and the terrorist threat seems to recede into the background as if it was never that important. While it is good to see the Arab-Israeli conflict from the perspective of women soldiers and to learn more about the reality of the harassment of Palestinians, Close to Home raises more questions than it provides answers for and left me confused about the point it was really trying to make. Perhaps it simply mirrors the entire conflict a maze with no exit.
At a border crossing, an Israeli soldier named Dana tells everyone to stop searching and go home. "I don't believe in it", she declares but Dana is put in prison for her rebellion and the film shifts elsewhere. Smadar (Smadar Sayar), an abrasive nonconformist has been placed in a unit with Mirit (Neama Shendar), an earnest young woman who takes her duties seriously, so seriously in fact that she is known as "the squealer", someone who reports fellow soldiers who slack off during patrol. The two are under orders not to socialize, smoke, eat, talk on a cellphone, or go shopping except during two half hour breaks but Smadar routinely breaks these rules as do other girls who alert each other on their cell phones whenever their superiors are in the area.
Mirit apologizes to a man whose misplaced ID card causes him to miss his bus and perhaps lose his job but Smadar calls her a moron for apologizing. Mirit barely tolerates Smadar's disdain of authority but things change slowly when a terrorist bomb goes off in their section and Mirit barely escapes injury. Mirit tries to be more like Smadar to the point where she is arrested and put in prison for one week for leaving her post to go dancing with a sleazy pick up while guarding a hotel. Smadar visits her in jail and gives her a gift of a hat she had been eyeing through a store window but Mirit rejects her overtures of friendship.
They slowly become friends, however, and then become enemies, then friends again, mimicking the clichés of cop-buddy movies. The film then chooses to focus on their growing closeness and "coming of age" rituals such as chasing boys and budding romances and the terrorist threat seems to recede into the background as if it was never that important. While it is good to see the Arab-Israeli conflict from the perspective of women soldiers and to learn more about the reality of the harassment of Palestinians, Close to Home raises more questions than it provides answers for and left me confused about the point it was really trying to make. Perhaps it simply mirrors the entire conflict a maze with no exit.