SWEET MUD (Israel)

This coming-of-age drama is informed by the personal experiences of writer/director Dror Shaul as a boy growing up in a kibbutz in Southern Israel. Sweet Mud takes place during the twelve months prior to 12 year-old Dvir's Bar Mitzvah, beginning in the summer of 1974. Miri, Dvir's mother, is a widow who has a history of psychiatric hospitalizations dating back to the mysterious death of her husband many years ago. During one hospital stay, he met Stephan, a much older and caring Swiss man who loves her. The kibbutz leaders allow him to visit but his stay is cut short when Stephan injures a neighbor who killed Dvir's dog and threatened to hurt the boy. Miri decompensates and begins to drink excessively. With his older brother doing his military service, the burden of helping Miri falls squarely on Dvir, who's dealing with issues of self-identity and first love typical of boys his age.

Sweet Mud contrasts vistas of the beautiful countryside surrounding the kibbutz with a debunking of the commune's romanticized image as a socialist paradise. The film is particularly critical of the kibbutz's treatment of its weakest, neediest members. Sweet Mud holds one's interest even though it loses its dramatic focus here and there. As visual narrative, the film never strays beyond the conventional. I found the performance by newcomer Tomer Steinhof (Dvir) wooden in spots, but effective enough to make me care. Variety's review, at its world premiere in Toronto, wrongly predicted the film won't amount to more than Shaul's forgettable Sima the Witch. Then Sweet Mud won four Israeli Academy awards, a youth prize at Berlin, and the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance 2007.