Director: Lior Ashkenazi
Starring: An ensemble cast, including Avi Grainik, Moran Atias, Rotem Abuhab, Hanan Savyon, Guy Amir, and others
Distributor: Netflix
Runtime: 95 mins. Reviewed in Nov 2022
Reviewer: Peter W Sheehan

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Rating notes: Coarse Language, Mature Themes, Sexual References

In this Jewish comedy-drama shows a group of friends decide to play a risky game which reveals secrets and uncomfortable truths in their personal lives.

This subtitled film from Israel tells the story in Hebrew of seven adults who were childhood friends, who come together for an evening meal to watch a total eclipse of the moon (the myth of a total eclipse is said to precede disasters). During the evening, the group plays a game where its members agree to share every text message, phone call, or notification they receive on their mobile devices. Calls on speakerphones are answered while the group is listening, and there are major consequences. Spouses cheat on each other, compromising photos appear online, and gender identity and sexuality are put under intense scrutiny. Moral values are upturned, and the mobile devices hide secrets that seriously threaten friendships and marriages. The shared messages expose lies, deceit, but also untruths, and they occur among a group of people, who believed their friendships were lasting ones.

This is a Jewish version of a story line that has now appeared in more than 18 films (sometimes under another title) that have been made by many different nations. Past movies include an Arab one, a Spanish one, a Mexican one, an Italian one, and an Indonesian version. The New Zealand Film Commission has used the same film title as this one, but has adopted a different theme, and other nations have done similarly. This film can lay reasonable claim to being the most remade film in cinema history, and it has garnered audience awards at many international film festivals. This is Israel’s turn at what it can do with the film’s provocative plotline. The film itself is the directorial debut of well known Israeli actor Lior Ashkenazi.

As every phone message is shared publicly, many things that members of the group have kept from each other for years are revealed. The ensuing interactions among the seven set the stage for vigorous debate about family values, moral standards of behaviour, personal loyalty, and human rights. Tension builds and escalates as it becomes obvious that the calls and messages are seriously affecting those round the dinner table. As the calls proceed, the network of secrets becomes increasingly wide-ranging. By the end of the night, no one sitting around the dinner table is spared from scrutiny, and further complexity is guaranteed by the fact that two members have agreed secretly to swap their mobile phones.

The plot highlights the unintended consequences of spontaneous, uninhibited social messaging. The film itself is intentionally designed to engender controversy and intrigue. It puts broad themes in a fictional context, and then invites viewers into moral argument and debate. The film, like others that have been made before it, dramatises the way human beings frequently choose for different reasons to conceal who they really are. The film is directed to challenge stereotyping, but it offers provocative views about the role of people in a society they themselves have created, and in environments that have been created for them by others. Responses to the film raise multiple issues that invite fruitful discussion about the ethics of human relationships that fail to be honest and open.

This is a film that is well plotted, directed, acted, and scripted, and it ingeniously places mobile phone technology at the centre of human distress. The film is innovative in how its plot unwinds – but not as forceful in how it concludes. The movie entertains but pulls back from saying what can (and should) follow from the secrets that have been revealed through the night.