SIX ACTS/S#X ACTS

Israel, 2012, 100 minutes, Colour.
Sivan Levy, Eviator Mor, Roy Nik.
Directed by Johnathan Gurfinkel.

Some of the films about contemporary youth and their behaviour make worrying viewing. This is one of those films, especially in an Israeli context.

It would seem that Israeli youth are just as self-centred, hedonistic, this-world-focused as are youth in most Western countries.

Six Acts focuses on a young girl’s changing school, uses social media as do the others, makes contact with some of the boys in her class. One of the main aims of the boys is casual sex, and this is shown in most of the six Acts of the film.Gili is eager to please, with few scruples about sexual behaviour, even in public places or with others in a room. We see her and a boy sitting on a billboard like that in Hollywood.engaged in sex, as in the other sequences in a room with other boys, in the water of a swimming pool. The sex is concerned only with the gratification of the boy who has no consideration of the girl, her sexual experiences, merely seeing her as a service to him, with the compliments that sexual encounter was ‘amazing’, even though it was very standard.

We see the boys, late teenagers, amongst themselves, their talk, watching pornography, discussing sexual behaviour, leaving a cinema because they did not like film while their girlfriends stayed, in the meantime indulging in other sexual encounters. Professions of relationship seem sincere but are completely vacuous. Eventually, the boys consider Gili as a sexual convenience and start to use the language of ‘whore’. Gili becomes a little disillusioned by this treatment from the boys but the film just stops leaving us wondering what will happen to her. The boys, of course, will continue on their ways unless some crisis occurs or some self-reflection. Such self-reflection is not at all on their horizons.

In 1995, Larry Clarke made the film Kids, focusing on similar situations in New York City. The film raised a lot of controversy, a lot of denials on the part of parents. It was recommended for parents to see to appreciate something of the lives of their children, aspects which are concealed from them. It will be the same for Six Acts.