PHOBIDILIA
Israel, 2010, 86 minutes, Colour.
Ofer Shechter, Efrat Baumwald, Schlomo Bar Shavit, Efrat Dor.
Directed by Yoav Paz and Doron Paz.
Phobidilia is a film made by young film-makers for a young audience. It is for the audience who finds lack of values in life, experiences fear and anxiety, opts out.
Ofer Shechter portrays a young man who lived a full worldly life, had an anxiety attack and saw it as a revelation and retreated into his apartment, corridor and garden, staying there for years. As the film opens he announces that his world, his kingdom, is collapsing. We then see how he lived in this world, alone, not venturing out, still receiving visitors, answering phones, having chat sex with a website. However, he receives word that the apartment is to be sold, he uses all kinds of means to defend himself while the estate agent uses various devices, including cutting off the electricity, limiting the water supply, digging up the garden and abducting the young man’s best friend, Albert his cat.
A young woman installing people meters intrudes into his privacy and he falls in love with her. He does not go out and she accepts this – however, she encounters the woman on the chat site and the woman dominates her and she flees the apartment.
As the film ends, the man ventures outside. Interestingly, in terms of values, and the film made in Israel, there is no mention of any explicit religion, no Judaism whatsoever in the film.
1.A young person’s film, the makers, the audience? Loss of values? No explicit religious Judaism?
2.The confined apartment, the Cinemascope style, the rooms, corridor, the beauty of the garden?
3.The title, anxiety, fear, the ideal life in seclusion?
4.The introduction to Weinblum, his declaration about his kingdom, the voice-over, the mess in the apartment, the fact that he had everything, food, television, computer, sex…?
5.The flashbacks to his free life, the collage? The change? A revelation? The panic attack?
6.Weinblum and his age, his appearance, the womb image and (*? Or ‘in’?the bath, food, sleeping, the computer, the television rubbish, the sex chat with Jessica, watering the garden, not being able to tell Daniela which flower was which? Albert, not venturing out to retrieve him? His routines?
7.Grumps: the old man, his appearance, his age? Talk, telling Weinblum about the house to be sold? Showing the visitors round, Weinblum upsetting them, talking about ghosts and murders? Running around with a sheet over him? Grumps coping with Weinberg, turning off the electricity, the television, the water, digging up the garden, taking the cat? His own story about being hidden in the hole for three years during the war? The felt need to come out of the hole?
8.Daniela, the phone call, her arrival, her glass of water, intrusion, watching the television to relax, going to the toilet (and Weinblum being picky about the hair)? The secret deal, the installation of the people meter? His idealism about fulfilling it? Her return, complaint about what he watched? Her advances, his rejection of them, agreeing to the date but not showing up, her anger, his explanation, her accepting this? The change? The sexual encounters? The encounter with Jessica, and Jessica ousting her from the apartment?
9.Jessica, the sex chat, her own personality, that she was only virtually real, yet conversing with him? His demand that she repeat that she didn’t exist? Her spite, assertion that she did exist?
10.His collapse, the television breaking, the phone breaking, the mess?
11.The scene with the sword, wielding it, threatening Grumps?
12.The final collapse, the final images of all the people in his life, his relationship with his mother, watching television with her when he was a child? His going out into the corridor and into the world – or not?
