By Emily K. Alhadeff, Associate Editor, The Jewish Sound
Fresh out of Israel and already scooping up a first place award at the Tribeca Film Festival is “Zero Motivation,” a darkly delightful girl-buddy comedy about the banality of daily life in Israel’s defining institution, the army.
“M*A*S*H” meets “Orange is the New Black” meets “Office Space,” “Zero Motivation” follows best friends Daffi (Nelly Tagar) and Zohar (Dana Ivgy), who are resigned to menial secretarial work at a combat base in the southern Arava desert — as close to the middle of nowhere as you can get in the tiny country. Cynical and uncouth Zohar is content to play out her two years breaking Minesweeper records, but melodramatic Daffi, whose main task is shredding paper, is desperate to be transferred to Tel Aviv. When Daffi finds a way out, the friendship hits the rocks. Meanwhile, the office — populated by a highly entertaining and talented cast of women — is constantly on the verge of falling apart and ruining the dreams of their boss, Rama, who yearns to climb the ranks but can’t get a grip on her subordinates.
“Zero Motivation” opens in Seattle at Varsity Theatre December 12. It will run for just one week.
Writer and director Talya Lavie based the script partially on her own experiences in the army in the late 1990s. In a twist on the classic, male-centric army experience on film, she turns the camera on the women.
Instead of lingering with the men in the situation room after the women (clumsily) bring them their morning Nescafe, the film follows the women back to the office, where they sing pop songs, shuffle piles of hopelessly disorganized papers, and bicker. “Zero Motivation” offers a refreshing cinematic gaze — nay, stare — at women’s lives independent of their relationships with boys. Imagine “Bridesmaids” actresses Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudolph 10 years earlier and stuck in a remote Israeli army base.
This is not to say the women are heroines — far from it. Neither are the men — who decorate the background as higher-ups, combat soldiers, eye candy, agents for virginity loss, and potential rapists — heroes. Lavie gives her characters the opportunity to expose the ridiculousness of being a young adult thrown into a grown-up establishment. Thankfully, she also gives them the opportunity to redeem themselves. Well, mostly.
The reception in Israel has been spectacular: “Zero Motivation” is 2014’s highest grossing Israeli film, and one of the most popular in years. This is likely because it relates to a huge segment of the country’s population, arguably equalized by the army experience, yet without venturing into Israel’s many recent war zones. While war looms in the background, it is removed from the plot and the furthest thing from the minds of the petulant and self-absorbed main characters.
Lavie believes her film is inevitably political for Israelis, but for outside audiences it will resonate as the universal story of feeling like a dispensable cog in a very large wheel.
Like prison and office work, there’s nothing outwardly funny about army service, and beneath the humor of “Zero Motivation” lurks the darkness of being stuck in a reality one would never choose. In this reality, staple guns become coveted weapons and you are forced to share a bedroom with strangers who have no filter for their honesty. It’s a place you have to make the best of, either by rising to the challenge of the service or futilely attempting to undermining it. (Let’s just say the paper shredder plays an integral role.)
Even though the plotline plows through suicide, rape, and destructive antics that can only be wrought by women on their best friends, Lavie’s creation is fluid and light. There’s no hero, but there’s no antagonist, either, just a loveable-hateable duo of frenemies struggling against the forces of growing up.
If you go: “Zero Motivation” will play at the Varsity Theatre, 4329 University Way NE, Seattle, from Dec. 12 through Dec. 18. Check the listings for showtimes.