Even
during times of war, military life offers plenty of absurdity, usually in
direct proportion to one’s proximity to paperwork and bureaucracy. Daffi is the
“Paper & Shredding NCO” of her remote desert military bass. She yearns for
a transfer to Tel Aviv but lacks the talent or ambition to merit such
consideration. Daffi and her best friend Zohar will file and shred as little as
possible, thoroughly frustrating their commanding officer in Talya Lavie’s Zero Motivation (trailer here), which opens this
Wednesday at Film Forum.
Zero is broken up into
a trio of story arcs, but Zohar will play a whole lot of Minesweeper in all
three. As Daffi’s best friend, she always saves her fellow office NCO a seat on
the over-crowded bus into base and scrupulously edits her letters requesting an
undeserved transfer. However, Daffi assumes she is on her way when her
presumptive replacement shows up, but the freshly arrived Tehilia is an
impostor, who has bluffed her way on-base to visit the love-‘em-and-leave-‘em
soldier she considers her boyfriend. After the inevitably disappointing
reunion, Tehilia determines suicide really isn’t painless after all. Yet, her
ghost will apparently play a role in successive story lines.
Tonally,
Zero is constantly shifting all over
the place, veering from low comedy to high tragedy with little warning. You can
never get too comfortable with the film, but that is what makes it rather
distinctive. It is also not exactly clear just what Zero hopes to satirize, since it frequently undercuts its own
implied criticisms. After all, the resentful Zohar and entitled Daffi seem to
have found their right level, as has the commanding officer, the painfully
ambitious Rama.
As
Daffi, Nelly Tagar supplies the film it Private Benjamin-ness. She is kind of
cute, but you would not want to deal with her high maintenance neediness. In contrast,
Dana Ivgy’s Zohar is cut from cloth similar to Alan Arkin’s Yossarian, but
takes a detour through Where the Boys Are
territory in her quest to lose her virginity. As Rama, poor Shani Klein is
stuck with all the clichés of a minor authority figure in the No Time for Sergeants tradition, but
Tamara Klingon nearly steals the picture as Irene, a catty Russian recruit apparently
possessed by Tehilia’s ghost.
