Terminal illness dramas have been done to damn-near ad nauseum at the movies. Ever since 1970’s “Love Story” became a worldwide sensation, Hollywood’s been trying to tug at our heartstrings with an insufferable amount of replicants — best of all was the 1983 weepy “Terms of Endearment,” which also ended up winning the Best Picture Oscar.
Yes, it’s been a barrage of terminal illness movies ever since, and you’d be hard-pressed not to have a year where a film about the topic isn’t released. With all that being said, first-time director Ruthy Pribar’s “Asia”, winner of the top prize at last year’s Tribeca Film Festival, is a sobering affair — avoiding the usual sentimental cliches a debilitating illness drama might have, in favour of stellar direction and acting.
Set in Jerusalem, Asia (Alena Yiv), a Russian-Jewish single mother in her mid-30s, works as a nurse and looks after her ailing teenage daughter, Victoria (Shira Haas). Vika, as she likes to be called, has never had a boyfriend; as for Asia, she has the kind of highly dysfunctional friends-with-benefits relationship with a doctor, Stas (Gera Sandler), that has the audience begging for her to escape the toxic ordeal.
Meanwhile, Pribar deals with Vika’s illness in realistic fashion, the disease never mentioned, but it looks like ALS. Once Vika’s diagnosis is revealed, Pribar means to show us how our bodies can harrowingly betray us at any moment. You can feel the physical debilitation that slowly, but surely creeps into Vika’s system.
Less successful is Pribar adding male nurse Gabi (Tamir Mula) to the mix. Vika, a virgin, crushes over him, and wonders if he could maybe be her one, and only, sexual partner before Father Time runs out. Gain seems to be interest in the proposal, but the whole thing makes for a rather uncomfortable and damn-near creepy subplot in the film.
Pribar shows assured intelligence and intimacy in the way the inevitable tragedy unfolds on-screen, but instead of focusing on the potent mother-daughter story at the core of her narrative, she’s bogged down by a misguided interest in Gabi and Vika’s hookup scenario. Regardless, this is a sacharine-less account of the everlasting bond between mother-daughter. Pribar creates honest conversations for Haas and Yiv to act upon — all three women make a formidable team.
SCORE: B-