21/11/2024 - In Israeli filmmaker Nir Bergman's latest, a young ultra-Orthodox couple is thrown into disarray when the husband’s hidden queerness is discovered

All throughout Pink Lady, its primary characters hem, haw and brood about “God’s plan” and “God’s intention”, reminding us that for truly religious people like they are, belief is all about doubt and confusion, and not just assurance. The contradiction is both blunt and complex enough to upend one’s sense of self, and also be the conflict driving a sturdy screenplay: if homosexuality is profoundly contrary to Judaism, how could God have imposed it upon one of his most observant adherents within Israel’s influential and feared Haredi community? Following up his 2020 Cannes Label-selected Here We Are [+see also:
trailer
film profile], Nir Bergman has brought Pink Lady to Tallinn Black Nights for an Official Competition world premiere, directing the first feature-length screenplay of Mindi Ehrlich (who was brought up in these religious environs). Like a few recent Israeli festival premieres, it was made as a co-production with Italy.

Bati (Nur Fibak, in her first major role since Nadav Lapid’s Ahed’s Knee [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Nadav Lapid
film profile]) aspires to the ultra-Orthodox ideal in contemporary Jerusalem: working at a ritual bath known as a mikveh, she dotes on her two young children, and is devoted to upholding the denomination’s female prerogative of family and homemaking. Young, unworldly and naive (in a manner hyperbolised to create a binary opposition in the script), her world is shattered when compromising photos of her husband Lazer (Uri Blufarb) nestling in the car with another man are posted through her front door. Something has always felt unsatisfying and ill at ease in her marriage – intimated in an early scene where Lazer appears in physical pain as they have their sole monthly intercourse at the opportune moment in her fertility cycle – but now she can truly identify it. The attitudes towards it exist on a spectrum, as Bati begins a long process of denial, negotiation and acceptance; Lazer nurses his secret coming to light and reluctantly submits to demeaning religious conversation therapy; and the fringe group of Haredim who blackmail him attempt to violently rid their community of elements supposedly “disgusting” God, for which He’ll punish them all.

Pink Lady’s various flaws in construction and dramaturgy can’t always enrich this, but it’s a very urgent film in its own way: an autopsy of what’s afflicting enclosed, repressive communities like the ultra-Orthodox and similar ones elsewhere, and a despairing alert to the status quo’s fragility, rather than one final, liberal plea for tolerance and reform. The Haredi community is one of modern Israel’s foundation stones, and obviously enjoys greater political influence and sway than in previous years; dissenting figures like Lazer and eventually Bati (whose Natalie Portman in Closer-like “pink lady” wig allows her to experiment with integrating into secular society) won’t stop it from being perpetuated from generation to generation, yet they’re symbols of how, in 2024, there’s less chance of suppressing the modern world. The cognitive dissonance we feel when “Photoshop” (as Lazer attempts some damage-control explanations) comes out of their mouths, when we overhear the cheery, Orthodox-suitable podcasts they listen to, and even when the long-bearded and baggy-clothed gang beat Lazer in the street like true thugs, feels pointedly intentional from Ehrlich and Bergman.

Shifting from an arthouse-friendly semi-mystery, as the intrigue over the clandestine photos consumes the family, to a true sex comedy (one of the Israeli film industry’s historic traditions, we can say), as Lazer and Bati force themselves for one last try into the straitjacket of unwanted coupledom, the overall shape and trajectory of Pink Lady create an unfortunate disjuncture with its vital perspective on one of contemporary Israel’s most febrile elements.

Pink Lady is a co-production by 2-Team Productions (Israel) and Rosamont (Italy). mk2 films is its world sales agent.