Directed by Jorge Weller
Produced by Zvi Shpilman and released by Israfilm
Color, 100 min.

            What is supposed to be an Israeli romantic comedy with an emphatic Mexican twist turns out to be rather limp and predictable. Vicky, a successful salsa dancer in Mexico, disguised as a nun in order to enter Israel where she can earn money to send back home to her mother and young son, meets Yoni, an Israeli biologist en route. Alas, Yoni (Angel Bonanni) seems to be the typical academic “brainer” who can see into the most minute scientific data but not into the ruse that virtually everyone in the cinema can. Which nun in anyone’s experience has guzzled wine as rapidly as Vicky does in the film? And which nun would ever throw herself at a stranger the way Vicky does? As played by Angelica Vale (the Hispanic Ugly Betty of Mexican television), Vicky wears bright red lipstick that sits as improbably on her lips as the nun’s habit does over her shorts and slippers. Worse, the actress pushes the farce far more than it deserves to be pushed, but the script (by Elisa Dor) shares half the blame, for it trades on clichés and offers little that is truly romantic or comic in exchange for them. Of course, you expect the scientist to become infatuated with the camouflage nun, and, of course, you expect complications—what with Beto (Roderigo Gonzales), the handsome, sexy father of Vicky’s boy, working (illegally) as a janitor by day and giving salsa lessons at night to women whom he could knock off like a skilled marksman at target practice. The complications get worse because Yoni is supposed to marry Dafna (Hilla Vidor), an uptight woman from a rigidly conservative Jewish family. You just know that Dafna will concoct trouble when she finds her fiancé becoming increasingly attracted to Vicky, and, of course, she does by calling in the Immigration Police to arrest the Mexican illegals. The only interesting comic insight is into Israeli xenophobia, as represented by Dafna and her parents, but this insight is only in patches and is glossed over through situation comedy.

            How all the predictable complications shake out predictably is the stuff of this film that inexplicably won Best Comedy at the Omaha Jewish Festival. Perhaps there wasn’t much competition there, and if there was, none of it must have been truly inspired. Suffice it to say that neither the director nor anyone in his cast knows how to turn this film into something even vaguely resembling a Cary Grant romantic comedy. The best things are the brief salsa scenes. At least they have real rhythm and movement, and take your mind off the clichéd plot and characters.

pic 1: Angel Bonnani as Yoni and Angelica Vale as Vicky


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