There is something patently urban about the need to shut the world out, and Phobidilia works as a city film precisely because its protagonist, a troubled young man, won't go outside. Petrified of the city, and perhaps of the life he used to live in it, he's opted instead to hide in the apartment he sublets from an absentee landlord, and order everything he needs – food, entertainment and even sex – over the phone or the web.
Just when Regev (Ofer Shechter) seems to be settling into a comfortable pattern of seclusion, lightning strikes twice. First, Grumps (Shlomo Bar Shavit), a realtor in the landlord's employ – and a steel-tough Holocaust survivor who knows a thing or two about hiding out – decides it's time for Regev to emerge from his cocoon. Meanwhile, Daniela (Efrat Baumwald), a sassy young employee of a television market-research company, mistakes him for the flat's owner, and a bumpy romance builds despite the attractive young hermit's increasingly unsociable ways. But all the while, the outside world that so scares Regev taunts him and continues to infect his paranoid thoughts.
Phobidilia ponders our relationships to spaces that are outside our control: What drives people to shut themselves in? If they find their way back out, what, really, is the best they can hope to find? Emerging from the feverishly creative pool of fresh Tel Aviv talent, this feature debut from brothers Yoav and Doron Paz is incisive, compelling, internationally minded filmmaking. (Regev's constant companion, the television, floods his space with multilingual genre fare from around the world, while his online hookup seems to be Texan.)
The film exudes all the stylistic verve the brothers' experience as music-video directors would warrant, but is also a passion project with the heart of a modern-day fable. Shechter, a well-known Israeli actor and model, went the many extra miles of moving into the apartment set and never leaving during the long weeks of shooting; the desperate energy of confinement with which he inhabits both his role and the increasingly claustrophobic space makes this story's resolution all the more moving.
Kate Lawrie Van de Ven
Yoav and Doron Paz were born in Natanya, Israel, and studied film at Tel Aviv University. They have directed numerous music videos, commercials and television series. Their short films as co-directors are
NEFEL (04) and
A Beautiful Day (05).
Phobidilia (09) is their first feature film.