The Burglar

The Dead Sea is one of Israel's biggest tourist attractions and the surrounding desert is immensely picturesque. It's nice to see some of that in a movie, although we don't get much because burglary and the wilderness don't exactly mix. That's one of the problems for the protagonist; even in what passes for a town by desert standards, she doesn't enjoy the anonymity a big city would give her.

The protagonist-- the burglar-- is flawed and apparently not entirely sane. She breaks the rules, but not in a charismatic, rebellious, Thelma-and-Louise way. She breaks rules we don't like to see broken. Not an easy person to sympathize with, but we can sympathize regarding the problem she faces, which is how to keep body and soul together when her mother suddenly disappears.

Besides the handful of desert shots, the movie boasts artsy close- ups of the kind that aid suspense by assuming unexpected points of view. Once, for a second, I didn't even know what I was looking at at all. And I wasn't always sure what was happening and why. But the heroine's risky break-ins are consistently suspenseful and there is a fine little gallery of actors on hand for the anti-heroine to be alienated from.