★★★☆☆
When an actor goes on to direct or pen his or her debut feature film, it often reflects the actor’s true inner self. People tend to judge an actor based on his or her choice of roles and movies performed. After all, it is how most actors are remembered by.
Natalie Portman directs scripts and performs in her very first feature film based on Amos Oz’s autobiographical novel about his parents and him back in the late 1940s. A Tale of Love and Darkness brings Amos Oz (Amir Tessler), a young son of his parents Arieh (Gilad Kahana) and Fania (Portman), back to his childhood days in Jerusalem when it was still under the British Mandate.
Life was hard then as social unrest ensues amidst tension between the Arabs and Jews. Fania who was born and raised a romantic, had idealistic visions of how her life should be. Witnessing bitter incidents that included her friend being shot dead while doing her laundry, she shortly plunged into depression and a sorry state. With her husband keeping an emotional distance from Fania likely due to differing mindsets and a lack of understanding, the only person whom she held strongly onto is her son Amos.
Despite being narrated by an elderly Amos, the film progressively adopts the perspective of Fania. This often leads to extended scenes of hallucinations in her personal parallel realm where a broad-shouldered man is constantly traversing about – keeping her engaged and tempted.
This very man of her illusions is later hinted to be a persona of Death, a visual depiction of how Fania was gradually drawn towards it before embracing death (literally in an illusional scene where she was drenched in heavy rain and despair before she gave in and embraced the man tightly in her arms).
A Tale of Love and Darkness becomes an interesting piece of cinema under Portman’s helm. Adapting Oz’s narrative to venture deep into the skins of Fania, Portman portrayed Fania’s inner struggle and how it affected Oz’s perspective of his mother and the world around him. It reflects Portman’s ability to explore an alternate perspective to tell someone else’s story for a different take on the same story.
While it was never intended as a serious political commentary on this chapter of Jerusalem’s history, the audience feels and understands the plight of common people like Fania and Amos and how people around them were similarly impacted.
When Fania was desperately trying to come to terms with her situation, it was sadly aggravated with a discouraging husband who doesn’t understand her plight and a hostile mother who only caused Fania to further repress her feelings. Emotions rang loud when she responded by slapping her own cheeks relentlessly in a quiet space.
The film is also viewed as a romantic tragedy of Fania who eventually departed poetically in her late 30s. A Tale of Love and Darkness is exactly what its title represents – a sad story of how a woman was failed by love and happiness in a lifetime veiled by darkness during miserable times of unrest.
Also published on InCinemas.sg
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