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Aviva My Love

Audience pleasing pabulum

By PETER KEOUGH | October 24, 2007

1.0 Stars

AVIVA MY LOVE: Stereotyped woes translated into cliché’d stories.

There must be a cinematic new wave afoot in which directors around the world churn out treacly, “audience-pleasing” pabulum knowing that it will probably serve as the opening-night film at various festivals in the United States. The Boston Jewish Film Festival, one of the bright lights on the local movie calendar, has fallen victim to the trend with this excruciating comedy/melodrama from Israeli director Shemi Zarhin. Aviva, working stiff and beleaguered housewife, believes she’s a writer. How else can she cope with the men in her life, who are ineffectual, treacherous, and dull? Or her kids, all sullen, ungrateful, and messed-up? Or her younger sister, who’s a nudge with her own dreary problems and who might be sleeping with Aviva’s feckless husband? Given all these stereotyped woes, what choice does she have but to transform them into even more-cliché’d stories, narrated in voiceover and dutifully illustrated by the filmmaker? Such is the power of Art.

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