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Director Hadas Ben Aroya’s first two movies established her as a keen-eyed observer of Israel’s urban youth. Her student short Sex Doll is about a teenage girl eager to have sex for the first time, while her debut feature People That Are Not Me tells the story of a 20-something’s struggles to reconcile her vision of the worldly, liberated person she thinks she’s supposed to be with her desire for a monogamous relationship. There’s a clear evolution from the highly-stylized first film, which is chiefly concerned with the interior life of its protagonist, to the second, which is equally attentive to its contemporary Tel Aviv setting.

All Eyes Off Me continues this progression. It is divided into three numbered sections, the first of which opens with a closeup of a butterfly with a broken wing. The handheld camera pans up to a young woman (Hadar Katz) wearing so much glitter eyeshadow that she looks like a sparkly raccoon. She turns away and we follow her (literally, via the same over-the-shoulder shot utilized in People That Are Not Me) into a party where we learn that her name is Danny, that she’s looking for someone named Max (Leib Lev Levin), and that she’s planning to get an abortion. A friend launches into a detailed account of her own terminated pregnancy which lasts three full minutes of screen time. The storyteller means to be reassuring, but it seems obvious that the experience left her deeply shaken. Just not, apparently, to Danny, who says, “thanks babe” and leaves to resume her search for Max. When she finally finds him flirting with a woman named Avishag (Elisheva Weil), she pulls him aside and tells him about the butterfly (“and I thought, how come we don’t call the vet? Why would we call for a dying horse, but not a butterfly?”) and a fairytale hookup in Berlin that went sour as a result of oversharing but doesn’t say one word about her condition. The scene ends with Danny ducking into an empty bathroom and slumping to the floor.

The movie’s second and longest chapter opens with a closeup of Max and Avishag, the film’s new main character (Danny won’t appear again), intensely making out. Max confesses that he is attracted to men as well as women and describes a sexual encounter in the Philippines. “You’re sweet for telling me, and you’re so beautiful. And you have a black thing in your teeth,” Avishag replies. As they undress, they seem like the very model of honest, open intimacy. During their lovemaking, Avishag keeps putting Max’s hand on her neck. Afterward she tells him that he could choke her harder. Otherwise, she explains, “it’s like the opposite of a turn-on.” When he asks her what else she wants him to do, she mentions slapping her, pulling her hair, and spitting on her. “Let’s order coke and I’ll make us caipirinha and we’ll do it tomorrow,” Max says, but then he remembers he’s busy and asks if they can schedule for Wednesday instead. The scene ends with Avishag sending him a calendar invitation. It’s a joke, but by this time the feeling that they can communicate with one another is gone.

Cut to Avishag picking up the dogs she walks for a living, including one named Blanca who belongs to a middle-aged client named Dror (Yoav Hait). She lets them off their leashes at a dog park and settles onto a bench to watch “The X Factor Israel” contestant Eden Ben Zaken perform Christina Aguilera’s “Hurt” on her phone, which moves her to tears. We then see a drunk Max struggling with the keypad outside Avishag’s apartment. He pounds on the door and shouts for her until she finally appears to let him in. They argue in the hallway, but then go inside where drugs and alcohol give way to rough sex as per the plans they made earlier. He slaps her just once at first, then more and more. After a minute of this Avishag asks for a time out to catch her breath and rolls over on her side. Max kisses her tenderly and assures her that everything is all right. They resume intercourse, gently at first, but before long he starts hitting her again. Cut to the two of them in bed together the next morning. As Avishag uses her phone to contemplate her cut lip and bruised face, Max says, “we kinda overdid it last night, huh?” He half-heartedly offers to call off work but leaves when she says she’s fine. The rest of the section chronicles Avishag’s day, which she spends alone in Dror’s house after accepting a last-minute invitation to watch Blanca while he tends to his sick mother. She listens to his records, drinks a bottle of his wine, and ignores 17 calls from Max before dozing off in Dror’s bed.

To this point, All Eyes Off Me is very much in the same vein as Ben Aroya’s previous work, but it has more conviction: the sex scenes are longer and more explicit, themes like the gap between imagined and realized fantasies and her generation’s inability to talk about their feelings are explored in greater depth, and motifs like reality television are used more effectively. It’s the film’s third and final chapter, though, that it will ultimately be judged by. It begins a few hours before the second section ends with Dror returning home to find Avishag still there. The remainder of the movie takes place the following day. Avishag apologizes for falling asleep. Dror assures her that it’s fine and offers her a cup of coffee and a ride home, but it quickly becomes apparent that she’s in no hurry to leave. Eventually they wind up sitting next to each other on the couch. Avishag kisses Dror on the lips and says, “I’m really attracted to you.” They strip down to their underwear, lie on the floor, and share an electronic cigarette. Avishag asks Dror when he adopted Blanca. He says, “you don’t do well with silence, do you?” “Were there women you just lay beside in silence?” she asks. “Yes,” he replies. Avishag says she wants to try it for herself. She sets the alarm on her phone for a minute but starts to kiss Dror after 30 seconds. He makes her reset the timer. When it hits zero, the film ends.

What’s interesting about this final chapter is that it introduces something new into Ben Aroya’s oeuvre. Dror is significantly older than any of her other characters and is the first male to achieve co-protagonist status (along with Avishag) of a portion of one of her films. Dror is inhibited but knows what he desires; Avishag is uninhibited but has no idea what she wants. If Dror’s only function is just to provide contrast, I’m not sure this section of the film is as successful as the first two. If, on the other hand, he represents Ben Aroya’s first foray into a fuller exploration of Israeli society, it will likely be remembered as a turning point in her career. Either way All Eyes Off Me confirms that she is a filmmaker to keep an eye on.

Awards:
Best Israeli Film, Jerusalem Film Festival; Best Actress (Elisheva Weil), Jerusalem Film Festival; Next Wave Jury Prize, Miami Jewish Film Festival

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