| Review:
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An Israeli movie that provocatively probes the points
of convergence of religion and sexuality, The Secrets (Ha-Sodot)
also subverts the mystical, as in the Kabbalah meets the
Kinsey Reports. Directed and co-written by Avi Nesher, The
Secrets is a male take on painfully thwarted female desires,
both erotic and vocational, within the rigid orthodox religious
wing of Judaism.***
Naomi (Ania Bokstein), is no ordinary Israeli teen.
The grieving daughter of a rabbinical community leader,
whose mother has just passed away, the independent minded
young woman is being pressured into an arranged marriage
to dad's favorite disciple. But she's determined to go off
and study the Talmud first, at one of the very few religious
seminaries available to women.***
And while Naomi's lot in life has been preordained
for her as a rabbi's wife and the bearer of his children,
it seems that she'd much prefer to be the rabbi instead,
an apparent nonexistent aspiration. Painfully aware of her
late mother's chronically depressed unrealized existence
as a woman tied to kitchens and cribs, Naomi was a child
who identified with her father instead, going about stroking
an imaginary beard on her chin while other girls confined
their daydreams to future motherhood.***
When her father begrudgingly grants her wish to attend
the seminary before her marriage, Naomi heads for the insular,
sexually segregated community where strictly same sex rituals
and downtime revelry are teeming with homoerotic tendencies
brimming just below the surface. There Naomi forms an intense
bond with rebellious French free spirit Michelle (Michal
Shtamler), an education in passion and revelation that vies
subversively with her Talmudic studies. And when the two
girls are assigned by the school to charity work delivering
groceries to a scorned village invalid, Anouk (Fanny Ardant),
the Kabbalah teachings they apply in real life to the healing
and redemption of this sexual outcast, awaken a mutually
surprising sensual journey for the inseparable pair. And
serve as both a dangerous break with rigid tradition and
a defiant but fearful female liberation.***
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