Efes beyahasei enosh

Zero Motivation is a wry comedy about female officers and enlisted personnel in the Israeli army fighting a war on bureaucratic boredom. Making her feature film début, writer/director Talya Lavie explores the banality of mandatory service from a droll and distinctly female point of view. It’s an apolitical picture with a perspective on war so far removed from the front lines as to be almost absurdist.  The conscripted women’s military duties consist of shredding paper, organizing files, and serving coffee to male officers. The terrific ensemble cast (headed up by Dana Ivgy and Nelly Tagar), creates a deadpan depiction of how institutionalized sexism, malaise, and disconnection from meaningful work breed contempt for authority in these women and undermine their own sense of self-worth. These ideas are intriguing, but the presentation never transcends the tedium it depicts. The humor is so dry it practically evaporates before it can fully hit us. And, while the supporting characters (played by Shani Klein and Tamara Klingon) are multi-dimensional and unconventionally sympathetic, the leads seem more like sitcom characters with contrived quirks.

Many critics have compared the film to Private Benjamin and M*A*S*H, but the similarities are only surface deep. It has far more in common with the work-place comedies of contemporary television; shows like the original BBC version of The Office, NBC’s Parks and Recreation, and HBO’s Getting On. The 90 minute film is even broken into three distinctive chapters, making it play all the more like episodic TV—the first half hour feels like a pilot and the last half hour feels like a finale that sets up the next season. And like a new TV show, Zero Motivation takes its time finding its narrative and thematic focus. Lavie seems more interested in establishing characters and mood than a cinematic storyline. This approach works far better in an open-ended television series than in a feature film. We can feel ambivalent about the first few episodes of a new show because, if we like the tone and the characters, we’ll hang in through episodes that don’t feel fully developed. But a feature constructed in this fashion doesn’t have that luxury.  Zero Motivation ends just around the time we start to get interested.