Dizengoff 99

Writer/director Avi Nesher was beginning to looking like a sort of an Israeli Orson Welles-- starting at the top and working his way down. This movie, his second, didn't quite duplicate the success of his first even though a lot of people were enthusiastic about it. The character that sort of represents Nesher in the movie is working on a script-- if my eye didn't deceive me, it was called "The Cowards"-- and he says that he's going off to America but that people do come back. Nesher did make a movie called "The Cowards" and it didn't succeed. Then he did go to America, he made some movies there that failed to excite much interest, and he came back to Israel. The unusual and un-Wellesian twist is that in Israel he's been a big success ever since.

Nesher's success has redirected attention to his earlier films, but alas this one hasn't aged well. Nesher himself admits that his first movie, The Troupe, succeeded despite being plotless. So, more or less, does his most recent movie as of now (Image of Victory) but both movies engage audience interest in their characters and have a climax that makes the interest worthwhile. Dizengoff 99, not so much. In retrospect, it's not surprising that out of the lead actors, Gidi Gov (who came out of music), Gali Atari (ditto), and Heli Goldenberg (out of modelling) all pretty much dropped their acting careers after a while. They don't project sharply defined personality for the audience to grab onto, and the script doesn't do the work for them. Meir Suissa, who does his best with a part that consists largely of unintentionally (and unconvincingly) knocking props over, hasn't struck it lucky-- since Nesher's The Troupe-- with a big movie role that does him justice.