{"id":29281,"date":"2014-05-05T10:16:34","date_gmt":"2014-05-05T17:16:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/?p=29281"},"modified":"2014-05-06T10:25:25","modified_gmt":"2014-05-06T17:25:25","slug":"orange-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/?p=29281","title":{"rendered":"Orange People"},"content":{"rendered":"

Zohara, Mater Familias at the centre of Orange People<\/em>, has the gift of second sight. She brought it with her to Israel from Morocco many years ago, the ability to divine a person\u2019s hopes and fears at a touch from an intimate possession.\u00a0 But she has burdens of her own, ghosts from the past that refuse to leave her in peace.<\/p>\n

\"10170821_300688410095883_5926708136347062216_n\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Orange People (Anashim Ketumim)<\/em>, written and directed by Hanna Azoulay Hasfari, is a heartfelt if perhaps somewhat sentimentalised film. It considers the curious balance between the present and the past, the compromises we must make to keep on living in the present tense. Zohara wants her daughter Simone to perpetuate the family tradition. She doesn\u2019t want to, though. Simone runs a restaurant; it\u2019s ironic though that her cuisine is very much simple fare of the past, leaving her precarious business easy pickings for the flashy new restaurant across the street. Her policeman husband Jacky tries to keep the extended family unit on an even keel, with mixed results; their teenage daughter is intrigued by her grandmother, but classes her visions a curious occurrence of narcolepsy. Might it run in the family? Good question.<\/p>\n

But the uneasy balance falls away when Simone\u2019s sister Fanny sweeps in unannounced. She had vanished without trace 16 years before. She was in Paris, it seems, but why she went \u2013 and why she has returned \u2013 remains a mystery. The answers, it seems, are tucked away in the dynamics of family relationships; held \u2013 perhaps unknowingly \u2013 by the three generations of the so-called \u201corange people\u201d.<\/p>\n

Orange People<\/em> has the feel of an intensely personal project. The veteran actress Hanna Azoulay Hasfari injects a certain anthropological charm into the film. Its paced is unforced, leisurely, and has the sensibilities of a document as much concerned with producing an accurate portrait of inter-generational strain than storytelling per se. Food is central to the narrative, such as it is. Zohara\u2019s rich Cous-Cous \u2013 which Simone never manages to emulate \u2013 punctuates the first half of the film, and later Fanny\u2019s attempts to win back her sister by revamping the restaurant in a more contemporary style define proceedings. Fanny\u2019s \u201cgenerousity\u201d doesn\u2019t work, of course. Certain truths have to be told before the family can move on.<\/p>\n

It does feel that the story-telling pales beside an admittedly intriguing mise-en-scene. Clich\u00e9 is never very far away, and whilst the conflicted sisters (Hasafri as Fanny, Esty Yerushalmi as Simone) have strong on-screen chemistry, Jacky, the outsider (Yoram Toledano) alternates between bemusement and confusion. If deliberate, it wouldn\u2019t be an entirely misplaced conceit \u2013 a nice flip of the patriarchal mode that so often dominates \u2013 but he has a pivotal role, and he doesn\u2019t quite negotiate this successfully.<\/p>\n

Proceedings do feel predictable; but since the journey to its cinematic conclusion is interesting, this can be forgiven. Anashim Ketumim<\/em> traverses the spaces between Morocco and Israel succinctly.<\/p>\n

Anashim Ketumim<\/em> (Orange People) (2013)
\nWritten and Directed by Hanna Azoulay Hasfari
\nStarring Esty Yerushlami, Hanna Azoulay Hasfari, Yoram Toledano, Rita Shukron
\n90 minutes, Hebrew and Moroccan Arabic w. English subtitles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Zohara, Mater Familias at the centre of Orange People, has the gift of second sight. She brought it with her to Israel from Morocco many years ago, the ability to divine a person\u2019s hopes and fears at a touch from an intimate possession.\u00a0 But she has burdens of her own, ghosts from the past that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29281\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}