A family worships musical greatness above all else in Itay Tal’s film about a mother raising a pianist son under the scrutiny of her family
A classical pianist gives birth to a hearing-impaired son in
Israeli director Itay Tal’s impressive feature debut. You could interpret his film as an allegory of tiger parenting and other child-raising techniques with gimmicky names. And the script raises all sorts of questions about whether talent is innate, how far it is influenced by genes, and whether it needs to be developed while young. Tal refrigerates these questions into an elegant and disturbing family drama that has echoes of Michael Haneke: it’s a film with a shard of ice lodged in its heart.
Naama Preis is the pregnant pianist, Anat, who is on stage when her waters break. Not missing a beat, she carries on playing, amniotic fluid trickling into her shoe. At the hospital, routine tests reveal that her baby son is deaf – further investigations will be needed. I watched what Anat does next with my hands covering my face; it is a heart-stopping moment of scary-but-not-scary cinema.