The titular “Pink Lady” in Nir Bergman’s film serves as a symbol of her protagonist’s sublimated desires. Courtesy of MK2 Films
Early on in Nir Bergman’s Pink Lady, Bati (Nur Fibak), a married Haredi woman and the mother of three children, is riding a city bus when she becomes aware of a dark skinned man, perhaps an Arab, eyeing her. She is at once attracted, intrigued and profoundly uncomfortable. She quickly turns away.
A deceptively simple film that explores sexuality and desire within an insular and restrictive ultra-Orthodox community, Pink Lady marks an impressive debut for screenwriter Mindi Ehrlich, an insider who married at 17, became a mother shortly thereafter, and ultimately escaped. Though the film offers a harsh critique of its world, it is never strident or even obvious. It’s an understated slice of life family drama that encompasses elements of mystery, thriller and, at moments, sex comedy that are simultaneously funny and unsettling, though often far more unsettling than comic.
Bati has opened a letter addressed to her husband Lazer (Uri Blufarb) demanding blackmail money. The note is accompanied by compromising photos featuring Lazer and his study partner cuddling and kissing. Lazer insists the pictures are photo-shopped. She tries but ultimately fails to accept the lie.
Lazer has never come out to her and she feels deeply betrayed, questioning her own judgments and their whole shared history; far worse, though, is the fact that he is gay, a major sin in God’s eyes that needs, in the view of their community, to be punished, corrected and eradicated.
Suddenly, their safe and secure little universe has been upended. There’s the blackmailers’ endless financial drain on their limited resources; the devastating fear of public exposure; and, the question of how Bati and Lazer should navigate their own relationship as they attempt to move forward in a space where every activity, from the mundane to the most holy, is prescribed.
Two thematic threads, the pragmatic and theological, are overtly, but more usually subtextually present throughout. First, maintaining marriage and family is sacrosanct. The theological aspect, the second thread, is more complex, raising questions about God’s plans. If we are all God’s creation, Lazer wonders, doesn’t that include the homosexual? Still, every attempt is made to change him, including the use of brutal conversion therapy that predictably alters nothing. If anything, he is more drawn to men than ever.
But Pink Lady is most centrally about Bati’s sexual awakening. It is largely told from her perspective, not unlike 2022 Moroccan flick Blue Caftan and to a lesser extent Haim Tabakman’s 2009 drama Eyes Wide Open, a story about queerness among the ultra-Orthodox, viewed largely from the male perspective. All three films are paradoxically set in worlds that are intensely sexual. Perhaps that’s precisely because the forbidden is ubiquitous.
In the wake of Lazer’s revelation, Bati becomes increasingly aware that her husband has never approached her with enthusiasm, not that she really knows what desire looks or even feels like. Still, she can’t help but compare her situation to that of her sister who says that her husband is so sexually eager he waits for her outside the mikveh.
Bati asks Lazer, “Are you attracted to me?” to which he says, “I’m attracted to your soul.” He adds that the rabbi assured him his true sexual impulses would pass once he was married.
Bati also consults their rabbi who urges her to pray at the Wailing Wall for 40 days and she complies even as she notices that not all women, including those in her own community, are as chaste or unschooled as she is.
At the mikveh,, where she hands out towels and helps women prepare themselves for their ceremonial baths, she encounters an unfettered Natalie (Gal Malka), sporting long, unkempt hair, tight-fitting jeans, and nail polish. Devoid of inhibition Natalie takes a selfie as she waits her turn. Bati warns her that her nail polish will only serve as a “buffer” to a godly ablution and in the event she’s pregnant she will give birth to an “impure” child.
Amused and derisive, Natalie is an anomalous character, but revealing nonetheless. Her presence hints at cultural cracks beginning to surface. Bati’s initial distaste for the woman gives way to feelings of reluctant affection. A friendship grows. Natalie escorts Bati to department stores where she encourages her to try on a range of immodest outfits.
And later when Bati discovers a stack of heterosexual pornographic magazines that one assumes the rabbi has given Lazer in an effort to turn him on to women, Bati is fascinated by the explicit pictures, particularly one model’s wild, dyed pink wig, and all that it evokes. She refers to the model as the “pink lady” (thus the film’s title) who becomes an emblem of everything Bati is not and perhaps yearns to be.
The film wonderfully brings to life a cross section of Haredi society, starting with its most dissonant violent outliers, a gang of three blackmailers, clad in traditional garb who are determined to rid their community of homosexual people, who they say are “disgusting” to God.
And there are the warring mother-in-laws — Bati’s mother is hardscrabble, while Lazer’s dresses elegantly — who begrudgingly join forces in an effort to keep their children’s marriage intact. Theirs is a subtle nod to both class differences and improbable sisterhood.
But one of my favorite characters, and one of the most unexpected, is a flaky shaman of some sort or maybe she’s just a plain old yenta, who advises Bati on how to arouse her husband, demonstrating in a sultry voice that she’s “waiting” for him and enacting a come-hither stare.
In scenes that boast a feminist streak while at the same time being profoundly anti-feminist, Natalie also serves as teacher, showing Bati how to do a lap dance while Bati clumsily impersonates her moves. The underlying assumption here is that Bati is responsible for Lazer’s homosexuality and that she is in a position to cure it. Indeed if she is a dutiful wife she will do so.
Best known for In Treatment and more recently the award-winning Here We Are, depicting a father’s relationship with his autistic son, Bergman summons forth a textured, contradictory, and at times visually striking world.
The acting is superb throughout. Fibak creates a strong woman who evolves, matures and changes. Blufarb is every bit a tormented trapped soul who desperately wants to be what he isn’t. It would be glib and reductive to say he’s bisexual (though he probably is) and in lesser hands that’s what the film would assert. What’s relevant here is that in the end, though open to interpretation, this film is a powerful love story between Bati and Lazer. The film never loses its authenticity. What remains undisputed is freedom’s cost.
Pink Lady screens Thursday, June 5, as the opening film at the Israel Film Festival at JCC Manhattan.
