LOST EMBRACE (2004)

While LOST EMBRACE gets off to a slow start sensually speaking, it is well worth watching to get to its sensual heart.Don’t get me wrong.There are suggestions of sensuality throughout—the lingerie store that is the main setting, the flirtatious, sexy internet lady who tries on underwear for our hero in the dressing room, the wonderful old grandmother who sings Yiddish folk songs, and Ariel’s running into his old girl friend who was pregnant with another man’s child.

For me, this movie gets really sensual when Ariel’s mother sparkles.She is not classically beautiful, but she is beautiful in every other way.Her face lights up when she talks to her husband on the phone, when she talks to customers, or most of all, when she is in her Israeli folk dancing class.Her face is pure joy.

Ariel, the hero, is a lost soul, and the pain in his face and wan smile are very sensual for me..His father left for Israel when Ariel was an infant, and Ariel has never recovered.As he says, his father went off to save every Jew except one. Ariel is really sweet as he fumbles around trying to make sense of his world.He puts an old tape player together so he can hear his father’s voice.He tells his grandmother he’d love to hear her sing, and then her wonderful face lights up as she sings out loud.(Before that, she had sung in her mind because the songs made Ariel’s grandfather too sad.)

There is so much more…the best of which is the wisdom imparted in many scenes.The point is to go on living….I want to ask him things, but I don’t want to see him… She was missing something that was only a step away.

The Play Featurette on the menu is wonderful.It shows how they shot the movie with hand held cameras to give it energy and honesty.It talks about the grandmother who in real life is a singer of Israeli folk songs.It shows how they set up their own galleria which still stays running even though filming is over.The director, Daniel Burman, is obviously passionate about his work.He talked about the ugliness of the setting for the film, but said that “in every frame of that chaos, there are lots of stories you wouldn’t imagine.”I think it is this honest look at the passions inside people that make this lovely little film so sensual for me on every level.