Arts & Events

Opens December 12 at the Landmark in Berkeley

Director Talya Lavie's "dark comedy," Zero Motivation (in Hebrew with English subtitles), has racked up a half-dozen Ophir Awards (Israel's Oscar) for best director, screenplay and actress. The film (with screenplay by Lavie) follows the misadventures of Zohar (Dana Ivgy) and Daffi (Nelly Tagar), two forlorn young women assigned to perform their mandatory two-year stretch of national service in an isolated military base in the Negev Desert. It's a tale of slackers, hackers and attackers surrounded by an emotional desert of Negevtivity. 

 

 

We know Zohar and Daffi are the best of friends because we see them sharing ear-buds. Their lives are a shared play-list of dashed hopes and unlikely daydreams. 

In the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), the plight of female soldiers—aka "the girls"—is decidedly retrograde. On one hand, they are trained to shoulder powerful rifles and stand guard duty. The rest of the time, they are expected to be on hand to schlep coffee and for the male-dominated staff meetings. 

Zohar and Daffi are a pair of complainers (not that they don't have cause to kvetch). While other members of the all-female office crew are somewhat adjusted to their fate, our reluctant "sheroes" spend their office hours as surly, sulking slouchers. (Is it really the case that most female recruits in the IDF routinely greet each other with hugs and kisses and break into Israeli pop songs while working at their desks? Perhaps this is an indication of the lack of discipline that prevails under the lax oversight of Lieutenant Rama (Shani Klein), the lack-luster administrative officer.) 

Lavie based her screenplay on her own experience. "During my mandatory military service as a secretary," she recalls, "I dreamed of making an army movie with the pathos and epic proportions of classic war films." Instead, she opted to fashion a tale about "the gray, mundane experiences that my office mates and I had—hardly ever getting up from our chairs. Like most girls during their two years of service, we didn't risk our lives. But we were definitely in danger of dying of boredom." 

Daffi and Zohar are clearly members of the bored. Daffi is deemed such a non-performer that the only job she can be entrusted with is operating the office paper shredder. "Being a paper shredding NCO is what you make of it," she philosophizes. 

Poor Zohar. While she is known as the office's "Postal NCO," everyone seems to know that she also is the only virgin in the camp. She prays that she can be made "normal, like everyone else." Is she lez? (She does seem to be overly protective of the wimpish Daffi and, when she spies a smiling Daffi walking past her office window sharing her earbuds with a tall, handsome soldier, Zohar is crushed.) 

Meanwhile, Rama, the administrative office's overbearing commander, jockeys for a promotion but is constantly undercut by her two young slackers who would rather be playing "Minesweeper" on the office computers than keeping the administrative paperwork from falling into chaos. (Computerize automation has yet to reach this paper-clogged outpost, raising questions about the time period being depicted. Sometime after 1990, at least, since that was the year Minesweeper debuted.) 

In the early scenes, much is made of the fact that the office boasts two formidable staple-guns—"the only thing that works to hang posters!" one of the women notes. We soon see posters being stapled into the cement walls of the base, one after another. The posters are reminders of the IDF's history: The War of Independence: Sinai War, Six-day War, War of Attrition, Yom Kippur War, Lebanon War, Gulf War—the Gulf War? (Note: We'll be seeing those staple guns in a new light later on.) 

About halfway through, the film rises above the snarky fusillades of snide bitching and starts to become more engaging, with sharp bursts of ribald, cutting female humor. But just when it seems the film is starting to hit its mark as a feminist comedy, it turns dark. 

There is a hideous betrayal by a despicable male soldier that leads to a bloody shock and some strange personality changes that turn one side character into a psycho ghost and/or ghostly psycho, you decide. 

When Daffi's fantasy of winning a transfer to Tel Aviv (on the basis of a letter-writing campaign) falls apart, she decides to turn her life around. Bolstered by improbable visions of strutting through the streets of Tel Aviv in full uniform, makeup and stiletto heels, Daffi morphs from a whining nerd into hard-working officer-candidate. Alas, the payoff of her promotion will consign her dreams to the shredder and send her into another sob-fest. 

Ultimately, the bonds of Zohar's and Daffi's friendship are broken by competing dreams. The showdown comes when the estranged former BFFs find themselves alone in the disheveled office. Computers go crashing to the floor and soon both ladies are targeting one another with those military-grade staple guns. (If you've ever hankered to see a wild, shrieking shootout with flying staples, this is your movie.) 

Sent to detention following another major act of "creative insubordination," Zohar offers a sacrifice to save her one-time friend from losing her commission. Zohar winds up in psychiatric confinement. Which leads to a threat of physical assault. Which turns into something else entirely. 

The only joy for these two non-Army brats seems to lie outside the Army. And so the film ends with Daffi in an air-conditioned high-rise far from the Negev and Zohar running through the desert sand to catch a bus that will take her to Tel Aviv. 

And what about their commander Rama? In a deft but wrenching scene at a ceremony called to honor her years of service, Rama stands before her workmates and attempts to offer something from her heart—only to have her effort quietly stymied, leaving her wordless and humiliated. 

There may be more OMG pangs than LOL zingers in Zero Motivation but it's still worth the visit if you are curious about the IDF's FUBAR lifestyle.