"Round Trip" - an Incredible Foreign Movie

Plot Details: This opinion reveals minor details about the movie's plot.

I didn't start out renting a movie because it was billed as a lesbian love affair movie! In fact, I was quite surprised when I looked around to see how critics viewed this movie that I found out it won "BEST FEATURE: Torino Gay and Lesbian Film Festival" and "HONORABLE MENTION: Best Foreign Narrative Film, New York LGBT Film Festival." This film is unrated. But, other than seeing the two women kissing just a select few times and some maybe two scenes of them touching, there wasn't anything graphic. I don't actually recall even seeing any nudity in the film.

This is an Israeli made movie with English subtitles. It concerns a woman with two young children in a lifeless marriage to a deadbeat husband. Anat Waxman plays Nurit who works multiple shifts per day as a mass transit bus driver. You feel her pain as she works day and night to make ends meet and can't give the time and quality of love needed by her young daughter and son.

Nurit decides to move to Tel Aviv with her children and start a new life away from her husband. It tore at my heart to see the children ripped from their home and their father and taken to an old dusty broken down apartment a few hours away. The extreme disappointment is evident in the faces of the children as they walk into the old apartment which is a far cry from the more comfortable and much nicer apartment they had left only hours earlier.

Nurit takes a job as a bus driver in Tel Aviv but finds life is much tougher than she had imagined. The children are often left to get themselves ready for school and to do their homework at night without mom around to help. Nurit realizes that she must do something, without giving up and going back to her husband who sneered and said, "You'll be crawling back here in two weeks!!!!" as she left with the kids.

Her manager, suggests she hire a nanny and give the nanny room and board in exchange for taking care of the kids and keeping the apartment cleaned and cared for. Nurit hires Mushidi, played by actress Nthati Moshesh. Mushidi is a black women from Africa. A relationship develops between the two women and it's truly the first time we see Nurit smile and laugh. But it is destined to be rocky road as Nurit's daughter Hila (played by Reut Kahlon) sees the two women in bed one night and tells her father, Yossi (Eyal Rozales). Yossi goes to Tel Aviv and threatens Nurit; either she breaks up the relationship, or he takes the children back with him. He threatens that if she fights him about taking the children he'll take her to court where the lesbian affair will be all over the news media. Does Nurit continue the affair? Do the kids go back with their father? Does Nurit crawl back to her husband? I guess you'll have to rent or buy the movie to find out.

This movie really tugged at my emotions from several sides. First, Yossi is a deadbeat and cannot keep a job so you want to really hate him. But you see just how much love he has for the children and how much the children love him. You see him help them with homework, fix their lunches, take them to school functions, so there's conflicting emotions there. You can see his pain when Nurit leaves with the children. Though he shouts at her that she'll be crawling back, he goes to visit several times to see the children and try to get Nurit to go back home to him. You see a man who loves his family but just can't keep a job.

Nurit almost never smiles, but you see how utterly exhausted she is from working so many hours each day to keep a roof over their heads. You sense the hopelessness inside that things will never get any better until she takes the drastic step to leave Yossi. You WANT her to leave, but watching her rip the kids away from their home and father makes you want to scream at her: "Fine! Leave, but how could you go THAT far away???"

And watching the little girl, who appears to be about the same age as my daughter. What can I say? The children don't talk that much but they show so much expression through their faces and eyes. I saw so much of Hila's pre-teen attitudes and personality in my daughter that it grabbed at my heart. Throughout the movie you can follow the mind of the daughter through the pictures she's drawing.

And how could you not have emotions for Mushidi? You find out she has a young child in Africa. She's desperately trying to earn enough money to go back to her child or bring him back to Israel. You see how much she cares for Nurit but the relationship is so fragile.

The acting from all characters is fantastic. While Nurit and Mushidi are the primary characters each actor lends a perfect balance to the movie to keep the drama factor up without overshadowing the other characters. You can both like and dislike the characters at any given time because of the actions they take. Even the very quick appearances of Nurit's manager whose acting shows the audience that here is another lonely sole searching for some happiness. At one point HE asks out Nurit on a date. You'll have to watch the movie to see how that turns out.

There's not much in the way of a musical score to the movie. The visuals at some points even make the movie appear to be a documentary. The photography of the bustling Tel Aviv is a sharp contrast to the easier slower lifestyle in Northern Israel from where Nurit and the children had moved. Nurit's new manager had even made a passing remark how a bus on Nurit's route had been the target of a suicide bomber. That further adds to the suspense factor and leaves the viewer wondering if Nurit made the right choice in leaving her old home.

As far as dialogue, this is a tough one to call. Remember that you're reading subtitles so they are simple as possible so you can watch, read, and understand what's going on. But as I said, the movie is so well acted you don't realize you're actually reading the subtitles.

I don't want to give away any more of the plot , but I will say that I highly recommend it this film. After a few minutes, I didn't even realize I was reading subtitles, and that to me is the sign of a very good movie. While this has been billed everywhere as a gay/lesbian movie, I really didn't view it as such.

Just have some tissues handy.