Restless

As becomes clear virtually immediately, Restless doesn’t boast a whole lot of attributes designed to capture and retain one’s interest – as the film’s pervasive air of mediocrity is exacerbated by a central character that simply isn’t all that compelling. Writer/director Amos Kollek devotes the bulk of the movie’s running time to the plotless escapades of an almost extraordinarily shifty scumbag named Moshe (Moshe Ivgy), with a particular emphasis on his burgeoning fame as an underground poet (there’s also an eye-rolling subplot detailing his tentative yet entirely unconvincing relationship with a soldier-turned-bartender). Kollek has infused Restless with a sleazy, downright unpleasant visual sensibility that admittedly mirrors the gritty day-to-day exploits of its protagonist, yet the relentless seediness ultimately ensures that one is never able to connect with the material in a substantial way. Of course, it certainly doesn’t help that at the film’s increasingly intolerable center lies Moshe – an almost jaw-droppingly dull figure that never feels even remotely authentic or real (Ivgy’s wholly ineffective performance probably doesn’t help matters). And while the all-too-scant scenes involving Moshe’s cross-dressing Israeli soldier son fare slightly better by comparison, Restless is, in the final analysis, just another hopelessly middling effort that one inevitably encounters from time to time at a film festival such as this.

** out of ****