 means lion. He only means lion in Spanish. But her name was actually Ariela, which is lion in Hebrew. Okay, this is a really interesting movie, a movie you can learn from, a movie you can you can think of as an expression of Romeo and Juliet. And George and I both impressed with this movie. So George, I'm giving you five minutes because I know what happens to discuss how the track of this movie, what's the environment and what happens? Well, the movie opens with this young woman who's getting married, ritual cleansing herself. It's known as a mikvah in the Jewish culture, right? And among her, the ladies, you know, young women around her, there's this Ariela, right? Who's sort of blondish and they show her. And then there's this woman's marriage, and you know, they go through the marriage ceremony of the friend. And then they show Ariela, who is a mural artist. She goes into these other neighborhoods, not the neighborhood she grew up in. And she paints these murals, you know, on the walls, right? And this young man comes up and starts talking to her and they start the conversation up the two of them. And I think you've got you've got to back up a little bit and say all of this happens in Mexico City. Yes, yes, you have to mention that it's really important. I was going to get into that later. But yeah, it happens in Mexico City. And the whole basis is that Ariela is from a Jewish family that originally was from Syria. There's a whole Syrian Jewish mizahi group. George, it's really important to tell people where this takes place. Mexico City, you haven't mentioned that. And we really need to know that because this is all sort of geographic. Okay. Yes, this is in Mexico City. It's the Ariela's family is originally from Syria. They're Syrian Jews, mizahi Jews, right? And they're part of a little enclave of Jewish community in Mexico City. And she is dealing with her mizahi Mexican Jewish family. And so. So the storyline, I think I mentioned that she she was painting a mural on a wall in the in not her neighborhood, but in a poor neighborhood in Mexico City. And in a different in a bohemian art to art neighborhood. And this young Mexican guy comes up and starts talking to her about her painting, right? Because he's from a very artistic family, his family all into the arts into theater into art and whatever. So they start up a conversation and he sort of pursues her. I guess he's smitten by her. And little by little, they start a relationship, right? And the relationship gets stronger and stronger. And if they fall in love, and they have sex, you know, they, they, you know, do the do the thing, right? And as it progresses, she meets his family and she gets to know his father, who's a literary critic and he does plays and stuff like that. And and and but she never introduces him to her family because in the interim, her mother, who's a real good shouldn't use the Jewish term. But she gets she finds out, right? That something's going on. The mother really knows something's going on. And she starts prying her daughter. And her daughter, pretty much eventually, when the mother is crying, rakes down that she's in love with this guy Ivan. And and the mother says, Oh, thank God, his name is Zeus. So so but then the mother and her father, who's they're not their parents are no longer together. And that's all the family and friends try to make sure that they convince Ariela to break up with this guy and to start dating some Jewish guys in that community, right? And I want to go to the point about the family. Yeah, we get a snapshot of the family where they all come together on Sabbath evening. Exactly. And they make the prayers in a splendid house and a beautiful house. Yes. And the Ariela's grandmother likewise lives in a splendid house. These people are wealthy. And so you have to sort of take a track on who these people. Well, in the 50s, they came from Syria. They stuck together as a family. They had, they didn't have a farthing, not a peso when they came. And they got into some kind of retail business and they they stayed together is the point. They intermarried, you know, Jewish people, they stayed together. And they were they were fruitful. And they they were thriving through the period from the 50s to, you know, till now, essentially. And so you begin to wonder how do they do that? They came from Syria, which is an odd place really, to Mexico, which is another an odd place to to wind up in. And they got rich. And then you have this is really part of the story. You have a divorce. She was with her mother, but she saw her father. And it was like a friendly divorce. And I believe this is part of it. I think what the what the filmmaker is saying is that this family stuck together, even though there was a divorce, the the culture, you know, the ethic of this family was so strong that the divorce did not separate them, that the the family was still together following, you know, the culture following the mikveh you spoke of, inter inter relating with a number of other Jewish families, making money having Shabbos dinner. And all all of this despite the divorce, they were tight. And the multi generations of the family were tight. And the siblings were tight. So whatever had happened to them, before this, the time of this movie, did not get in the way of how close that family was. And furthermore, they were in Mexico, where there were not a lot of Jews around, where everybody around was Catholic or Christian. And so this made them all the tighter. There were no options outside those social options. Outside the family, they had been together doing that thing together for what, 50, 50 years. And so you have to you have to see the family in that context. He was the daughter of the family. They had expectations of her. And now she was going to have to break with them. This was it would have been tragic in New York or LA. But it was much more tragic in Mexico City. For all of those familial reasons that I just identified. And she was an only child too. She was the only child of the mother and the father, which probably made this even more emphasized in the parents that she was the only child. So okay, it's tragic. It's a tragic story. It is Romeo and Juliet. Although I didn't get any emotional reaction in my own self. With their romance. It was a little sketchy. This is a movie that won a wars for being understated. It was an understated romance. It wasn't, you know, that powerful thundering, Shakespearean, you know, romance. It wasn't. It was it was subtle. She was subtle. Ivan was subtle. The relationship with his family was subtle. He got an apartment. Remember that part? He got an apartment. He wanted her to spend time with him in the apartment. He was he was ready to marry her. Yes, but she was resistant because as you say, her mother spotted her interest in another man and she wanted to know everything. And when she found out that the other man was Mexican and not Jewish, he went nuts. And then and then they began the juggernaut. I mean, that was very interesting how they all came together all within the Jewish community. And they brought all these weapons down on her. And the question was whether she was going to tell them all to get stuck and go off with Ivan, or whether she was going to succumb to all the pressures. So let's look at the pressures. What kind of pressure you alluded to some of the pressures, but I think it's important to see what kind of things they did to this poor girl who was 25 years old, who was an idealist painted walls, you know, for free for free just to help people she painted walls. She was an artist. She was not all that pretty. A little plain pretty is what she was. And you know, you so you relate to her, but you don't get all that excited about her, you get excited about her situation and the tragedy of the situation. And now she's so vulnerable. He's been raised in the face. Okay, and they bring the juggernaut down on her. And it's almost a Zola-esque. So here's a human experiment. Now let's bring the juggernaut into the room. What happens? So she's a free spirit. Areola, you know, and then it's not only her father and her mother, but a lot of her friends trying to matchmaker matchmaker up with some Jewish guys, right? And then and then they get this, as you said, this professional guy who whose whole career is to get to make sure Jews don't marry out of their faith, right? And then they get the rabbi to talk to her. And then her grandmother who she is close with talks to her and talks about years of culture and, you know, 15 years they've been, you know, a lot of this is a persecutum. When you have the learning from the learning of persecution, the way Jews have been persecuted for centuries, you sort of become like a circle the wagons kind of mentality. No, there's a reason in the culture, you know, you, if you want to preserve the culture, you have to stay together, you have to marry in the faith. And it's been hammered in for thousands of years. So if you want to leave the faith, we disown you. We put all this pressure on you. We never talked to you. We say the prayer for the dead for you. Exactly. So, you know, tremendous pressure. And the result is that most people, most kids come to the pressure. Now that is, you had some stats on this, I think are very interesting. In the US, we, we that is the kids are somewhat emancipated. And we can tell our parents, look, sorry, but no, no dice. I'm not playing that game. I'm, I'm often doing whatever I want and don't get my way. Even there there's not, not everybody, some of them do succumb in Mexico City. And that's why I, I stress Mexico City, it's different. There's no way you can run to Exactly. See, the thing is, like, our neighbors across the street, when I was growing up, there's only two houses, us and the neighbor across the street, the oldest daughter married a Jewish guy, the second child, you know, the proverbial, she married this Irish guy, not non Jewish. And then the third one married a Jewish guy. So, and I'm sure that they were conservative. So there was a lot of pressure on those girls that, you know, and then the oldest one married a guy, an attorney, but with the same last name as us, which is really, I thought was uncanny of all the Jewish guys that she should have married someone with the same last name as the, as the non Jewish. There are 1000 stories. I mean, it starts with Shakespeare. But what was interesting about this movie, and I'm talking subjectively here, is that although you knew at the outset, what the result was going to be, because the structure around her was so strong and determined and baked in, you knew that she would never be able to prevail against them. She wasn't that strong. The problem. Okay. And, and you wound up like getting in her head. What is she going to do? What is this poor girl going to do? Is she gonna you're going to find the strength or not? Is she going to be able to bond up to his family? His his family going to tolerate her family. So, you know, it's more than the stories that you and I had when we were kids. It's more than, you know, what we've seen in other art, you know, Broadway movies for our whole lives, George, we've seen this play out from Shakespeare on forward with the Capulets and the Monty Goose and the parents didn't like each other. What happens now? And so you, you wind up getting in this poor, she's somewhat shy, right? Very introspective, quiet, thoughtful girl, then 25 or so, being faced with this horrible dilemma. You know, do I have to listen to all the people putting pressure on me? Or can I go with my heart? Even though my heart, you know, violates what they're telling me. And you know, you get to, you get to be with her. You get to be in her head. And that's what makes this art special. This movie goes beyond, you know, anything I've seen on this, on this very common, right, this common scenario, this common literary thread. We were really living in her head. The whole movie, where is she going to go now? And can she, can she find the strength? And also, I mean, it's, it's Mexico, it's Mexico City. She goes into neighborhoods that are not particularly safe. Yeah, she she's not well dressed. She's not doing anything fancy. She's just an ordinary, ordinary person, but she comes from the Jewish family and she's dating a Mexican guy who is a good guy. And his family is, is to be admired. So I, I don't know why, but I seriously related to her. And you know, in the problem that she had, and the variation on the ordinary theme, is she going to break away or not? And at the end of the day, it actually, I said before that you knew going in what would happen at the end. But I don't know why I say this. You didn't know exactly how it would happen at the end. You didn't know what the pressures would be, and how she would actually react to those pressures, and how he would react to those pressures. Can you talk about what happened to him? Because he saw that she she couldn't introduce him to her family. It was impossible. And so she kept on putting him off about that. And ultimately, he realized that it was not going to happen. So what did he do? Well, he left and found some Mexican woman to get engaged to. And then he she she contacts him on a cell phone. And he invites her to a party for his brother or his cousin, who was getting engaged. And at the party, he tells Ariela that he's also engaged to this Mexican, other Mexican woman. And I think that was pretty devastating to her because she still loves this guy, right? And he loved her. And they were they still loved each other. And yet they moved on because he saw that it was impossible that she just couldn't get to the point where she would, you know, introduce him to her family. She wasn't strong enough. And I think the director Isaac, Isaac Chouin, he really handled this beautifully. I mean, the whole storyline, the way he did this, showed he really understood this whole scenario. And it was very, very well done. So at the end, where are we getting now? Let's let's let's hold that for a minute. The end is very powerful. The scene where she meets Ivan's fiance. She's very Mexican. Very pretty. She's way prettier than Ariela is. So you have to think, well, what, you know, Ariela has talents and skills and a poetry about her, that the Mexican girl does not have, but the Mexican girl is very pretty. And Ivan's going to do that. And it's it's the end for Ariela. She has to and you know, you think you would see some heavy acting at that scene. But no, it's very subtle. You ever see her screw up her face or, you know, or cry or anything? You just you get a close up. There were a lot of close ups in this movie. You got to watch her react. But the reaction was not all that, you know, was not overacting at all. It was underacting. And you had to figure it out. I like movies that are like that. You had to figure out what she was thinking. And what the other people were thinking. You got to kind of the script, but you didn't get the emotive power. You had to you had a look for that. And you a lot of close ups, which I like. And that means they were good actors. And there was a good director there. But let me let me ask you about the final scene, because the final scene, when she finally, you know, realizes that there's no future in this, that she has lost her lover. She has lost the thing that the one thing that made that made a difference for her in her young life. So what happens? Well, she had already cut her hair for some reason. And she goes home. And she fills the bathtub with water. And she takes all her clothes off, she's naked, and she gets into the bathtub, right? And then she goes under the water. I still don't understand that last scene completely. It sort of leaves me questioning, because she stays under the water for a long period of time. You know, it's not just a quick get into the water, like it would be in a micro writer. She stays under the finally, I guess she comes up for air, you know, after a long period of time. And that's how the movie ends. So you don't know, at the end, was she thinking of ending her life? Or was she thinking of cleansing herself in this bathtub? Like, you know, similar to the mic fat, the beginning, they sort of have the movie starts off with a mic fat and ends up with her naked in, in this bathtub, while her friend was naked in the mic fat, in this big pool, she's in their bath tub naked underwater. So that sort of question, it leaves you hanging and I think a lot of some of the reviews I read said, they also felt that this was sort of left you hanging, it leaves you hanging. Let's let's look at the options. And take a minute to do that. Sure. One, of course, is you really are inevitably led to the possibility that she's committing suicide. Exactly. She's under the water for a long time. I'm not sure that you can do that very easily. You can't commit suicide in a bathtub. It's hard to do that all by yourself. And after a while, you realize that she's not expelling air. She's sort of holding her breath. So it's not really suicide. But you you're led to think it might be. The second, as you mentioned, it's like the mic fat, she is cleansing herself and maybe rededicating herself to the Jewish culture. She's saying, I'm making my own mic fat. I am I'm I'm cleansing myself from the trouble I had. I am now going to be a nice Jewish daughter, and follow the rules. And this is now the next part of my life, you know, washed. That's that's a possibility. Another possibility. I'm not throwing these things at you. See if you agree with any of them. No, the possibility is, I'm really ticked off about this. I am I am not going to buy into what they're selling me anymore. I am this is the demarcation in my life. I lost the one I loved. And they're never going to set me up with another geeky guy again. I will refuse that. And I will find, you know, I will find a future in my life that suits me. And I am, you know, doubling down on that. That's why I'm, I'm taking this bath. By the way, the camera is above her. It's it's not a shot from the side. That is above her. And you know, you're stunned with the camera angle. She's quite naked. You've never seen her quite naked before. I mean, right down to the pubic. And she she looks better than you thought actually. And, you know, part of it, I think is she's she's found herself, right? She's found herself and the hell with this noise, I am not going to buy into this anymore. I have I have determined something I have determined that I am stronger than they thought. And they're never going to do that. Never going to do this to me again. In my next chapter, I'm going to do it my way. That's another possibility. What do you think? Number three. And you know why? Because she was painting a mural. And she signed it. Leona, which is in Spanish. That's her name, Ariela, the equivalent in Spanish. So that what she's saying is pretty much is that I'm issuing my Jewish family, right? And I am now becoming Leona. I'm separate. I'm my own person. So that I think your scenario number three, because of the way she signed that mural, you know, that that's my take on this. And matter of fact, I find I found her sort of attractive. I didn't find that his Mexican fiance is attractive as her. So I just what makes the world go round, you know, so, you know, so, so it's scenario three. This was a this was an excellent, excellent, the way this whole thing was handled. And you the subtle, the subtlety you saying she never really expresses herself outwardly. It's she's holding a lot of this in. And even when the grandmother's talking to her when the rabbi is talking to her, when the professional guy who makes sure that Jewish children, young people marry Jews, she never she doesn't she does no expression on her face. Yeah, and she doesn't argue. She doesn't. She's quiet. She's reserved. She listens to them very dutifully. She does her, you know, do little daughter thing. Exactly. She never says you're all wrong. And I'm, you know, what you said is wrong. And this is wrong. And that's wrong. No, no. Just listen, which is so interesting, because that's what would happen. Yes, she is torn. She's you can tell she's torn. She's she was very close to her mother before this thing. And you can see in the early parts of the show, they show how close she was with her mother, right? And, and this sort of created a separation with her mother, a rift. So she's torn, you know, it's, you know, even, even number three, the thing about I'm going to do it my way now. There's, there's tragedy in that. You know, this was first love. This was Romeo and Juliet. It's not all that obvious. But after a while, you put the pieces together and you realize that's what it was, for both of them. And so now that's been just, just destroyed. And whatever chapter follows for her, it's missing him. She'll never have what she had before. She she she'll try to fill the void. And she never will. But she's determined to move on anyway. But she, we don't know where what chapter two is, you know, we don't, we can only imagine anything could happen. He could not marry this one other woman. She could break down and finally get him back, you know, because she's the one who contacted him by cell phone to communicate with him after going out with all these, as you said, nerdy Jewish guys, right? Why did they have to find nerdy? But it has to be a sequel, George. We need a sequel to find out what she did. Yeah, you don't know where she's going to go. You don't know where this is why did they just like that other movie with the guy that he became from the Bowery boys, and then he became famous. He became a government official. And then at the end, he was in the garbage truck. Remember, what was that? Remember that movie? Yeah, once upon a time in America. So they leave you hanging, right? And in this thing. So I mean, I'm not sure that because, you know, maybe she finally gets her the strength to tell her family, you know, screw, screw off, you know, that she's gonna she's gonna do this because and for me, it all has to do with that Leona, the signature signifies that she's really rich. identity is breaking away from who she was. Whenever people change their name, that gets really pretty profound. And this was pretty, pretty profound. So so we have to see what to see. As you said, what's the sequel? Where do we go? Where does she go? Where does this story finally end? You know, because if she breaks down, and introduces him to her family, that relationship could get back together. Because that was the crux of the problem is that he insulted that she wasn't introducing. And they weren't going to tolerate it, though, not not one of them is going to tolerate it. They were going to disown her or something. You know, but you know, take it one step further, we don't have that much time left. But one step further, isn't this kind of chapter to chapter thing, where you finally decide that you are in charge in our analysis here today? Isn't that really everybody? You know, leave it to bevert does not really exist. That there is always a stress point with your parents. They tell you what to do. And at one point or another, you say, Well, thank you, but I'm on my way. And isn't that part of this movie? So true. I mean, my parents meddled in every aspect of my life. I would have done what the hell I wanted, you know, career with everything. But it was from top down, very, very overbearing, you know, and my brother's second child, he that's always the case in immigrant families, and minority families, I think always, but a lot of the time. And the question is whether my my hypothesis here works for everybody, including, you know, leave it to beaver families who, you know, have what appears from the outside to be a very, you know, lovely familial relationship. I think there's always tension. It's the way the human family works. There's always the weaning. It's the weaning. And that's what we saw in the bathtub. Okay, let's rate it. What do you think? I really like this movie. Let's put it that way. I liked what Isaac Charem did. I mean, the subtlety, as you were saying, I'm going to give it a 10, not a 10 plus, but a 10. I felt that it was very well directed. Everything, as you said, subtle, the points that were being made that the emphasis on her senses, her feelings and stuff, which will, as you said, very subtle. I like this movie. I'll give it a 10. Well, what do you think? I hadn't heard a thing about the 10 plus yet. This was a first that you mentioned. I didn't know that was on our scale, George. Okay. But since you mentioned it, I'm going to give it a 10 plus. Okay, I want to do you and better. Because what I liked was, there was a certain amateur quality about the movie. There's a certain amateur quality about her. She never was fancy. She was never exuberant. She was sometimes, but mostly she was just an ordinary girl trying to get through it in an environment which didn't make it easy. And I really enjoyed the characters. I think I know those people. I mean, unbelievably, so do I. I'm very So they were they rang true. Everybody in the movie rang true. Nobody did. I'm very critical. I watched these movies at home. And it all rang true. And it got me close to them. I felt close to all of them, including the family that was leaning on her. And so I give it a 10 plus. Beautiful. Thank you, George. We have so we have miles to go. And all these great movies that are coming out. And they're not just all of vengeance and violence. They're movies you can learn from George. Thank God. Yeah, I'm sick of all the violence in the world and in movies. Let's get to things that we can learn from not and not how to shoot somebody or not. True. Thank you, George. I always look forward to our conversation. See you next time. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktechawaii.com. Mahalo.