Badlands

It's always good fun to see a boy wax romantic over the first girl to give him a handjob--and if the boy should be a black-hatted Jew, the fun is only improved. For secular viewers, there's the hint of a freak show to the proceedings; for those of us with religious ties, the delicious frisson of self-recognition.

And what if the yeshiva boy has preserved his pallor despite a Mediterranean sun? Then you've got Eitan Gorlin's first feature, The Holy Land: a sometimes heartbroken, sometimes furious coming-of-age drama, set in a bleak and outrageous version of Israeli society.

Gorlin made The Holy Land on a budget of approximately $1.98, shooting mostly in somebody's Jerusalem apartment and on outdoor locations that he apparently used fast, before anyone asked to see a permit. He also borrowed some television news footage for the opening montage: a rapid-fire sequence of street demonstrations, tank forays, rubble, ambulances, charred human remains. The not-quite-apposite voiceover that accompanies these images, delivered in high-pitched, Russian-accented English, turns out to be the commentary of the handjob giver, an immigrant turned prostitute who is the film's de facto narrator. "Men in the Middle East are primitive and stupid," she declares in the flat tones of experience. "I hope the Jews and Arabs kill each other till there's no one left."

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