Free Zone

A bit of a bait-and-switch from the beginning, which sees Natalie Portman crying in extreme close-up for 10 minutes straight. But Free Zone is unconcerned with Natalie Portman’s character, preferring instead to use her as an audience surrogate between two characters who function as symbols writ large for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Free Zone lacks for subtlety and hammers home its various talking points repeatedly, stranding three talented actresses with little worthy material to work with.

The story is armed with loaded material – a Palestinian and an Israeli both look to an American to work as intermediary to square a debt – and the film overloads it with needlessly arty digressions. Loads of shots are superimposed over the car windows, colliding past and present, which would be more interesting and significant a choice if the film bothered with giving these women dialog worth listening to, or characters beyond their symbolic meaning. What we’re introduced to at the beginning of their journey is the same state they’re in when we reach the end. There’s some good film-making here, it’s just buried beneath strange choices and the questionable choice to present the eternal conflict in the Middle East as a quirky road trip.