The Women's Balcony movie review (2017)
In the opening sequence, the chattering ensemble noisily traipses down a narrow street of their Jerusalem neighborhood, headed to a bar mitzvah at their local synogogue, wielding plates of food and gifts, buzzing with collective excitement. The inciting event for all that follows occurs during the bar mitzvah when the women's balcony in the gender-segregated synagogue collapses, a collapse which puts the rabbi's wife in the hospital, and renders the building unsafe. The elderly rabbi is thrown into a state of confusion following the collapse, a confusion bordering on dementia. This is now a flock without a leader.
During this noisy chaotic opening, we meet the ensemble. There's longtime married couple Zion (Igal Naor), and Ettie (Evelin Hagoel), who have a relationship loving and playful. Yaffa (Yafit Asulin), Ettie's unmarried niece, is tired of having her single status be a topic of general conversation, and is lethargic about going on more dates, despite the encouragement of all of the women around her. Rounding out the group are Ettie's married female friends, powerhouses all, Tikva (Orna Banai), Ora (Sharon Elimelech), and Margalit (Einat Saruf), each married to a man in the congregation.
Into these well-worn and comfortable lives enters the handsome and charismatic Rabbi David (Avraham Aviv Alush). Rabbi David recognizes that this is a congregation in distress, and looks upon the collapse of the synagogue as a judgment from God. This congregation has to be whipped into shape. Nothing less, as he says, than the fate of Israel is at stake. He heads up the reconstruction project, as well as addresses what he sees to be the most pressing issue facing the congregation: the women.
Naturally. Women are front and center in most discussions of theology, in any faith: What should we do with the women? How do we keep them in their place? How do we control their sexuality? These questions were not at all factors to the "We" of the group until the cult-ish David, trailing acolytes from a nearby seminary, came along. All of the women in the congregation are devout, but none of them wear head-coverings. Rabbi David takes that on first, urging the men to make their women wear head scarves. The men, each of whom fall under the sway of the rabbi's passionate and inspiring personality, obey, meekly bring home scarves to their baffled and irritated wives.
