ISRAEL / GERMANY
2011 / WORLD PREMIERE
1H27 / IN HEBREW
Synopsis
Tamar, 35, a beautiful young woman, lives alone with her two daughters. She can’t restrain her sexual appetite and gives herself to several men of the village.
Shai, a young man, just moved back in the region to handle his dead mother's assets, but as he meets Tamar, he decides to stay. They soon fall in love, but will Tamar be satisfied with only one partner?
director: Hagar Ben Asher
screenplay: Hagar Ben Asher
cinematography: Amit Yasour
editing: Asaf Korman
sound: Ronen Nagel - Yisrael David
production design: Shunit Aharoni
cast:
Hagar Ben Asher
Ishai Golan
Icho Avital
Yoav Levi
Tzahi Hanan
Stav Yanai
Daria Forman
production
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ROHFILM GMBH
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benny@rohfilm.de
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press agent
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contact Cannes
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Since the shooting of Pathways, her short film selected in 2007 at the Cinéfondation, the Israeli Hagar Ben Asher explores the territory of sexuality. The Slut, an infringing tale, is about Tamar, the mother of two little girls, who ‘shares herself’ with a blunt sense of equity between the men of her village: “I always shoot about basic topics such as love, family, men, victimization and guilt, director and title-role explains, At first I looked for actresses, much better then I was, then – call it fear, overconfidence or incapacity to give up the whole film? – I ended up playing (in) it”.
So she became Tamar, whose love for Shaï, a vet, threatens at the same time her individual freedom and the collective sexual balance. Opening shot on a stallion in broken momentum, sequence where Shaï is putting up a fence, are forerunners of an unbearable hindering. Hagar Ben Asher has chosen to set this disturbing story in the heart of wide landscapes, granting each character a perimeter (outside or the barn of lovers, inside to Shaï), and to convene the animal realm – hens, peacocks, dogs, turkeys; she imposes an atmosphere (no music except on a sex scene) and a directing style where set frames are dominant. “I wanted to treat each scene as if it should stand on its own”, she states. The Slut is a matter of open or closed doors, of windows, of glances – characters observing themselves – and absence of judgment, at least up until the conclusion. “What a misery, a beautiful mystery, that’s what I kept saying to myself during the shooting”, Hagar Ben Asher explains. What a misery, indeed with this hard-won finale that should be controversial.
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Sophie Grassin |
