Blush (Michal Vinik, 2015) :Israel

Reviewed by Adam Holm, Santa Barbara film festival, 2016, Fiesta Five.

The kontroversiel Israelein film by Michal Vinik drags attention at the film festival with it’s beautiful cinematography, realistic love story between the same sex, and strong message according to lesbians and homosexuality in general.

Speaking about the film in general i really think the production level and creation of the envoirment/society was at a really high level. It really surprised me that a Israelin film could look that professional, like a real Hollywood production with the sound completely on point, the great beautiful cinematography with most of all hand held camera, nice colorful lighting and wide angels, but still keeping a decent shallow dept of field in all the shots. The whole visual feeling in the film was really on point and seemed really real for me, for the strong story and the envoirment they wanted to create. The film was visually moving with us all the time, which i felt the audience really appreciated when receiving the film.

The plot starts as a classic lovestory between two young students at college, where the blond girl first makes an impression on the main character Naama, which leads to them having a friendly relationship in the beginning, but after spending a lot of time together alone away from their crew, they start falling in love. Also the blond girl shows Naama a new world with experimenting with drugs instead of going to school. She is cool, and Naama gets really fascinated of her.

Taking a further look on the production, the editing and sound was really nicely done. The music was on point and very decent, but nothing special like the cinematography and the acting. Speaking of the acting the chemistry between the two main characters was really amazing. It felt real, and when you watched the film, you would actually sometimes believe that it was a true story of a true relationship between the two girls. A reference i got immatetely to another film was the French-Canadian film C.R.A.Z.Y about Zac, a young gay guy growing up in the ’70s in a homophobic environment in Canada.