Director Michal Vinik’s latest film, Valeria Is Getting Married, has a short running time and basically just one location, a perfectly clean and modern apartment that begins to feel smaller and smaller as the story progresses. In this tight window, Vinik manages to give us a strong and unique sense of what each of her characters is feeling. There’s Christina (Lena Fraifeld), the Ukrainian mail-order bride who arrived a few years ago in Israel. She seems happy with her new life and her Israeli marriage broker husband Michael (Yaakov Zada Daniel). Christina has some independence from her husband. She works at a salon with another Ukrainian woman. Her sister (Dasha Tvoronovich), the Valeria of the title, arrives in the country to meet Eitan (Avraham Shalom Levi), the man Michael has arranged for her to marry.
Valeria and Eitan have been talking online. She hasn’t hidden her cigarette smoking from him. Christina and Michael host a dinner in their apartment for the husband-and-wife-to-be to finally meet in person. Questions of control swirl immediately. Christina stands to receive her citizenship in a year’s time. Eitan jokes that she will have her freedom. This doesn’t go over well with Michael.
Despite the small space of the apartment, Christina and Valeria can talk in Russian if they need to say something more private. Christina speaks some Hebrew now. Eitan and Michael must use English if they want to speak with Valeria. Christina wants to sell her sister on the new life Eitan is offering her. It’s unclear whether this is for her sister’s benefit or to convince herself she made the right choice years ago.
The men aren’t portrayed as out and out evil. Eitan reveals to Michael he was hoping Valeria would say ‘I love you’ upon meeting him. He realizes how ridiculous that wish was, a vain hope that the weirdness of their situation would be so quickly erased. Christina feels the same pressure in presenting her life to her newly arrived sister. How good it is, how much you get used to it.
When these relationships, not just relationships but lifelong commitments, are this openly transactional, how are you supposed to act? Especially when considering the amount of money paid to get Valeria into the country and the legality of her situation there. How could you convince yourself any emotion is true when that’s the basis of being together? But is any connection just as arbitrary? Is being family to Valeria the deciding factor for Christina in what is right and wrong?
At the introductory dinner, Christina sells Valeria on all the positive aspects of life in a new country. But one question from Valeria throws her off completely: “Do you love him?” Christina can’t answer and Valeria locks herself in the bathroom setting off the tension of the rest of the movie.
The film is brilliantly acted by the entire cast. The stakes and emotion are tuned perfectly throughout. Why should anybody have to be lonely? But why should anybody be forced to make someone feel less lonely? The title suggests it’s a foregone conclusion: Valeria is getting married. She’s arrived in the new country. She is at their mercy. If there’s something for her to hold onto, what is it?
The movie feels deeply human without ever becoming melodramatic. Even a late introduced character who seems too aggressive is just another person trying to protect another. This movie is a gem and truly captures what this day in this life was for these people.
© 2020-2022. UniversalCinema Mag.
I think this site has very excellent indited subject material content.