Five Hours from Paris

Five Hours from Paris is a low-key tale set within Tel Aviv and revolving around Yigal (Dror Keren) and Lina (Elena Yaralova); Yigal is a recently-divorced taxi driver who finds himself falling for Lina, his son’s music teacher. Lina inevitably comes to feel the same way about Yigal, yet their tentative relationship faces a serious stumbling block in the form of Lina’s husband (Vladimir Friedman’s Grisha) and the couple’s impending move to Canada. The easy-going nature of Five Hours from Paris‘ opening half hour, coupled with a striking performance from Keren, ensures that the viewer is drawn into the proceedings almost instantly, with the palpable chemistry between the two central characters certainly going a long way towards perpetuating the exceedingly agreeable atmosphere. Filmmaker Leon Prudovsky’s decision to break the movie up into three segments – “Yigal,” “Lina,” and “Yigal and Lina” – ultimately plays a key role in the film’s transformation from agreeable romance to surprisingly melancholy drama, as the emphasis is taken off Keren’s character and instead placed on Lina’s depressive antics (eg she continues to pine for Yigal yet finds herself bound to Grisha). The film only grows more and more uninvolving after that point, with the deliberately-paced buildup into the conclusion particularly problematic – as Yigal and Lina are essentially forced to confront (and contend with) their despair without one another. And although the movie’s final shot is admittedly quite impressive and even a little stirring, Five Hours from Paris‘ uneven sensibilities inevitably drains the proceedings of its energy and renders its overtly positive elements moot.

** out of ****