‘This place is the essence of everything that’s f—ed up about humanity. Doesn’t that bother you?” Adam (Leib Lev Levin) asks his wife, Tamara (Victoria Rosovsky), in Real Estate: A Love Story, as they search for a new apartment in Haifa after they’ve been priced out of Tel Aviv.
Tamara, who is very pregnant, replies, “Not at the moment. Can we go up, Che Guavera?” and rings the buzzer.
The movie, which won the Israeli Feature Film Competition at the Haifa International Film Festival this year, is funny, entertaining, and very deep all at once – a feat that is almost impossible to pull off.
Director/writer Anat Malz has made an amazing debut film, which deals with a particularly Israeli issue: a couple wanting to go on living in Israel’s hipster hub but being forced into a more realistic alternative. This will also resonate with audiences all over the world because there are young couples getting priced out of apartments in New York, San Francisco, Paris, London, and chic cities everywhere.
What really makes the film interesting, and the reason that so many will relate to it, is that it both is, and isn’t, about apartment hunting; it’s what’s behind apartment-hunting, the need to find a place to live in every sense of the world, and the gap between our dreams and aspirations and our actual lives.
That’s why apartment-hunting is so emotionally fraught, because it’s like playing a game where the rules keep changing, where (very often) you’re starting at a disadvantage because of your low budget, and if you lose you could be out on the street, or forced to couch surf with the family that made you want to move out in the first place.
When a young couple has to move because of a pregnancy – an extremely common occurrence – it can put their relationship under extreme stress, throwing a spotlight on all their problems, as it does here. In fact, apartment-hunting is such a dramatic process, one that we all go through at one time or another, that it’s strange that there are so few films about it. You would think that every 10th movie would deal with it.
Intricate character creation, faultless acting
But it isn’t only the concept that’s interesting here. Real Estate: A Love Story works well because the characters are so carefully drawn and flawlessly acted that they will remind you of people you know, or yourself, or both. At times, it had almost a documentary feel to it, yet at the screening I attended, Levin confirmed to me that it was scripted from start to finish.
Both Tamara and Adam are difficult and have their quirks, as well as charms, and you can see the classic dynamic between them. Tamara, a graphic designer born in Russia and estranged from her bohemian, globe-trotting mother, who is living in Paris with one boyfriend or another, is marginally more practical and down-to-earth than Adam.
She wants their baby to grow up with a real feeling…
Read More: Israel, Haifa housing market stars in ‘Real Estate: A Love Story,’ film –
