Life is Life

Like Tom Lawless of “Goldfish Memory,” Macky, the novelist protagonist of LIFE IS LIFE, is a literati of prodigious sexual appetites. “I love all women. I want to go to bed with every woman I like. I want to love and be loved,” he rhapsodizes. Macky does have his pick, among the starstruck students in his Tel Aviv college courses, among random women in cafes – he even maintains a hotel room on permanent reserve for… whenever. But remember, Macky is a storyteller by avocation, one who has mined his own mother's life for fiction material. How much of what we're seeing is genuine, how much is fantasy? The 50-ish Macky finally separates from his wife (and child) for Ayala, a mother in her 30s. When Ayala's husband leaves her, however, the mistress's reaction is to remain distant and aloof from Macky. Without his muse, the writer casts about for new inspiration to finish his latest manuscript. Michal Bat-Adam and Moshe Mizrahi, themselves a First Couple of Israeli cinema, offer us an ironic portrait of an aging artist. (In Hebrew with English subtitles)