Taking home the best director prize at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival for his latest effort, director Nir Bergman tackles the taboo topics of homosexuality and female desire in the confines of an ultra-Orthodox community in Jerusalem. Crafting an intimate portrait of one couple’s crumbling marriage, Bergman offers a fresh take on the gay Orthodox experience by telling his story through a feminine perspective. Thanks to a detailed and affecting script from first time screenwriter Mindi Ehrlich (herself a member of Jerusalem’s Hasidic community), Pink Lady presents a detailed and grounded depiction of modern life in this sheltered community.
Bati (Nur Fibak) and her husband Lazer (Uri Blufarb) appear, at first glance, to represent the platonic ideal of their community. Pious, loving, and joyful, they have created a home full of warmth for their three young children. Lazer, a carpenter’s apprentice, was once a rising star of his yeshiva, and Bati works at the local mikvah, where the women of the community purify themselves in a ritual bath each month, before reuniting with their husbands. Bati is excited for her upcoming mikvah night, as it means she and Lazer will be able to make love. He is amenable, but hesitant. For a couple who so clearly care for each other a great deal, who hold such sweetness and tenderness for each other, the coldness in their lovemaking is puzzling.
The mystery of their relationship starts to unravel later that evening, as Bati finds a bloody envelope in the post box containing photographs of Lazer in a compromising position with another man. Despite some initial denials, he eventually admits the truth. He has had these urges since he was very young, but was assured that with marriage, the feelings would disappear. Instead, they had only grown, leading him into an affair. An affair for which he was now being blackmailed, threatening to destroy their family. Bati is horrified, but he begs for her help. Despite her own heartbreak, she agrees to help him through this, no matter the cost.
The pair set about gathering the money to pay off the blackmailers, and Lazer begins a series of conversion therapy treatments with a Rabbi specialized in these matters. Bati, for her part, turns to the power of prayer… and black lace lingerie. At times, the love the pair share shines through, and we almost hope that they can heal their damaged hearts and live out their lives in peace and happiness, but those moments are few and far between. While the film holds endless reserves of gentle compassion for both characters, it is unquestionably Bati’s film, and Nur Fibak does fine work bringing this conflicted woman to life.
Ehrlich, herself married to a good yeshiva boy when she was just 18, has spoken of her own struggles of feeling undesired in a marriage that was more friendship than romance. She brings much of her own experience to this story, shining a light on the experience of women taught to suffer through such situations in silence, all for the greater good of the family and the community. While that is the place from which Bati instinctively reacts, her journey over the course of the film leads her somewhere quite different. When Bati asks Lazer if he is attracted to her and he responds that he is attracted to her soul, our hearts break along with hers. And when she finally embraces her own needs and desires, we quietly cheer for her.
It is interesting that this story looks at this topic from the woman’s perspective, but in its sensitivity, refuses to vilify Lazer. We learn, throughout the film, that Lazer’s “sin” is believed to be the root of nearly all terrible things in the world, and that even in death, he shall never escape his nature, doomed to repeat the same struggle in the next life… and the next. In the end, Bati may have the ability to free herself from the prison of her marriage and pursue happiness on her own terms, but what becomes of Lazer? Bergman leaves the audience to ponder than for themselves.
Pink Lady premiered in competition at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival earlier this month.
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