Aviva Ahuvati (Aviva My Love)
Screenplay and Direction: Shemi Zarhin
Cast: Assi Levy, Rotem Abuhab and Dror Keren
Language: Hebrew
Running Time: 107mins

Aviva is a middle aged mother of two children living in the northern town of Israel named Tiberias, harboring dreams of getting her stories published. She is hard working in both the jobs that she does, a day time cooking job in a big restaurant and her writing. We writers can easily identify with her as she keeps taking notes of everyday life dialogues and incidents. Her husband has just given up his army job and is in the pursuit of a security related job. He is for all practical purposes, still unemployed. Aviva is the only breadwinner of the family and that puts all the pressure on her and makes her writing career even more difficult to pursue, not to speak of the financial demands of her two children. That is not the end of her problems, her sister Anita could not conceive a baby and the times when she does, she loses them in the miscarriages. Anita's husband is overpossesive and he is following her everywhere with binoculars suspecting her of infidelity. In short, Aviva is supposed to have a solution for all the problems of the family and together they are all weighing her down.

I loved the dialogue in this Film.

Aviva's husband : Good Morning!
Aviva : Good morning and a half!

In a conversation between Anita and Aviva

Aviva: are you sure?
Anita: sure and a half!

In a fight between Aviva's teenaged son and daughter

son: fuck off!
daughter: fuck off and a half!

Its cute, aint it? The one and a half business.

Anita introduces Aviva to Oded, a professor who has published some great works in the past but hasn't written anything for the past ten years. He sees Aviva's talent and promises her that he will help her achieve her goals by helping her rewrite. Financial problems are forcing Aviva to consider doing another shift at her restaurant. Oded has other plans and he makes Aviva an interesting proposition. Since she is finding it difficult to get her work published, and since publishers are all after him for another book from him, he would get her work published under his name and he would pay her some money for it, so that she could take care of her present problems and write in peace. It is a devious plan. Oded has lost his writing instincts but not his desire to be famous again. "so you want to buy my stories?", Aviva asks seeing through his plans. He could not look straight into her eyes. "we will have your name also, may be like a research assistant or something", he replies. Aviva takes the offer as she has two immediate needs to attend to. Her son's therapy and daughter's college fees (I know this sounds cornily like a typical Telugu cinema but it is done extremely well). She takes the offer.

The book is published and it breaks her heart(and ours) to see her work under some other name in the bookstores. When she comes home, her daughter tells her something interesting.

daughter: mom, I decided not to go to college, I found a job.
Aviva: what? what job is it?
daughter: I have decided to become a prostitute. It is fun and pays like hell.
Aviva: are you out of your mind?
daughter: It is better than selling your soul mom, I am just selling my body.

And the daughter shows the book and cries.

'Aviva, my love' is not really a fresh story and in fact it is a typical familial saga but it is wonderfully true to its content and director Shemi Zarhin sprinkled the narrative with warmth and humor. Shemi Zarhin is a big name in Israel and has won many awards for his other Films and he teaches filmmaking and script writing at the Sam Spiegel School in Jerusalem. His producer was at the screening and he told us that 'Aviva my love' was released in Israel in the April month and it is still running to good crowds. I can see that, it is a Film I enjoyed very much.

Click here for more articles by Hari Yelleti on IFFI 2006, Goa