Michal Bat-Adam, The Lover (Ha-Me'Ahev), 1985

Michal Bat-Adam, The Lover (Ha-Me'Ahev, 1985)
(source: 8bxsportmedias)
no copyright infringement intended

I watched this movie on TV one evening, sometime in 2000 or 2001. I didn't know anything about the director or the cast. Actually I didn't pay attention to the title either. Very curious, because the movie impressed me, and it came back to my mind often during the years. A film I couldn't remember the title, any name from the cast, anything, while remembering perfectly almost every detail.

An Israeli family where for some time things were far from running well. The husband owning a body shop, the wife teaching Spanish, their girl at the difficult age of fifteen - sixteen. An unknown guy appearing out of the blue, pretending that he had come from Argentina to inherit a dying aunt here. Meanwhile being without money, dying of hunger. The husband offering him shelter, a torrid affair exploding between the wife and the stranger, the husband incapable of doing anything against.

It's 1967, the war erupts between Israel and his neighbors. The stranger leaves the house, presumably to join the military, and simply vanishes. The wife enters a deep depression, and the husband understands that in order to save her he has to find the guy. For a week or so he searches for the guy everywhere (here the story takes a picaresque turn, with unexpected turns and funny episodes, like many stories of this kind). The aunt is far from dying, a schoolmate of the girl wants to start her sexual life and pushes the husband to commit, the girl herself starts her sexual life with the husband's apprentice (a very young and very nice Palestinian, otherwise helping the husband in his search) - and meanwhile the wife going on with her depression. Eventually the stranger is found, the scoundrel had just entered an orthodox community to avoid drafting.

Why did this movie remain so deeply in my memory? I think because I found in it a deep understanding of what true love is: the husband's love for his wife. In order to cure her for the depression the only thing to do was to find the vanished stranger.

Thus, I knew anything about the movie's story, nothing at all about title, cast, production year. We are now approaching the end of 2018, and one evening I felt that I needed to find the movie, by any cost. I searched on the web for three or four hours, browsing various sites of any kind, trying various search tips, till I found it! The Lover, made in 1985. I found then also a copy on youTube, doubled in Russian (that I attach below). It can be also watched onLine or downloaded by clicking here.

Michal Bat-Adam, The Lover (Ha-Me'Ahev, 1985)
(video by Joe Smith)

An Italian sequel (L'amante perduto, The Lost Lover) was made in 1999.



(Israeli Movies)