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(In French and Hebrew, with English subtitles) Unlike Emancipation above, this movie, also about a difficult marriage, is not a comedy.  If you viewed To Take a Wife, discussed in last month’s newsletter, you will be familiar with Viviane and Elisha Amsalem, two people joined in marriage, but separated in spirit.  We follow Viviane as she struggles to obtain a proper divorce, or gett, a judgment from a rabbinical court when it becomes clear that a husband and wife can no longer live together in happiness.  Elisha, however, adamantly opposes the gett.  As the years pass, through appeal after appeal, the procedure clearly is wearing down Viviane, even while it seems to harden Elisha with each new hearing.  Only at the end do we discover why Elisha is so stubborn in this proceeding and what Viviane can do to break free from her embattled and torturous marriage.   Filmed primarily in one small hearing room, entirely dialogue-driven, we learn to appreciate the subtleties of camera work and the silences between the lines of dialogue, as much as the dialogue itself.  

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