Dead Language ★

In the first half hour, it seems obvious that Mihal Brezis‘ and Oded Binnun‘s oblivious “odyssey” Dead Language is threading the same narrative path of countless romance movies in which two strangers meet under curious circumstances in a picturesque city and fall in love. But a few sharp turns make it painfully clear that this isn’t where the story of a middle-aged woman’s desperate search for amorous attention is headed. While this sounds like a promising digression from dramatic tropes, the promise is never fulfilled. In their search for something resembling a story, the married couple behind the camera and screenplay, co-written with Amital Stern and Tom Shoval, seem as clueless as their preposterous protagonist. 

The first scene shows her at the Jerusalem airport where she waits to pick up her husband Aviad (Yehezkel Lazarov), a linguist who just published his first book about the titular subject. This motive of dead languages, mentioned fleetingly in the shallow dialogues, stands as a vague metaphor for some intuitive form of communication that Aya (Sarah Adler) seems to long for when she worms her way into the company of strangers. One of these unsuspecting male acquaintances is Mr. Esben (Ulrich Thompsen), a light designer in town for a business trip. Posing as his driver, she brings him, against his declared wish, to a secluded spot, allegedly to enjoy the view on some sight he casually mentioned.

If the genders were switched and the music cue different, this would be a situation straight from a thriller. Brezis and Binnun apparently think that transgressive male flirting maneuvers that films normalized for decades as “romantic” were somehow cute if done by a woman. In the case of Aya, who has a pleasant enough, if not particularly passionate, routine with Aviad, she is a stalker and/or obsessive-compulsive monomaniac in the making. While the aimless plot paints her as unassuming and innocent in her intentions, her power games, pathological lying, emotional manipulation, and highly intrusive tactics are bizarre at best and criminal at worst. Thus, she secures a date with Esben, only to stand him up.

The following evening, she sneaks into his hotel room uninvited. After he returns to Denmark, Aya returns to his hotel room to secretly crouch into the bed of a completely different hotel guest who unknowingly spends the night sleeping naked beside her. It’s supposed to be funny, but the scenario is rooted in realism, not in satire or comic exaggeration. Lukasz Targosz‘ sweet music and Guy Sahaf’s warmly lit shots of cozy interiors and elegant hotel bars frame her actions as endearing when they’re anything but. Thus, it seems like distributive justice when she encounters a hotel guest (Lars Eidinger) who behaves towards her just like she does towards her targets. 

Only the audience is supposed to sympathize with her, which is almost impossible given her relentless talking, preying questions, and transgressive behavior. Is she mentally ill? Traumatized? Is it all just her fantasizing? All waiting for an explanation for her actions and narrative closure is in vain. Though the director-couple centers the adaptation of their Oscar-nominated short around her, Aya remains ultimately an empty shell. The underdeveloped characters give the capable cast little to overcome the immense boredom. The people she meets all seem interchangeable and disposable to her, yet she keeps tracking down and following strangers. Similarly, the story drifts between misguided romance, comedy, and drama, while succeeding as none.