The Upcoming
  • Cinema & Tv
    • Movie reviews
    • Film festivals
      • Berlin
      • Tribeca
      • Sundance London
      • Cannes
      • Locarno
      • Venice
      • London
      • Toronto
    • Show reviews
  • Music
    • Live music
  • Food & Drinks
    • News & Features
    • Restaurant & bar reviews
    • Interviews & Recipes
  • Theatre
  • Art
  • Travel & Lifestyle
  • Literature
  • Fashion & Beauty
    • Accessories
    • Beauty
    • News & Features
    • Shopping & Trends
    • Tips & How-tos
    • Fashion weeks
      • London Fashion Week
      • London Fashion Week Men’s
      • New York Fashion Week
      • Milan Fashion Week
      • Paris Fashion Week
      • Haute Couture
  • Join us
    • Editorial unit
    • Our writers
    • Join the team
    • Join the mailing list
    • Support us
    • Contact us
  • Competitions
  • Facebook

  • Twitter

  • Instagram

  • YouTube

  • RSS

London Film Festival 2012

London Film Festival 2012 – day four: Fill the Void

London Film Festival 2012 – day four: Fill the Void
14 October 2012
Eleanor MacFarlane
Avatar
Eleanor MacFarlane
14 October 2012

Tuesday 16th October, 6pm – Odeon West End

Blind dating, Orthodox Jewish style.

The void of the title that must be filled at all costs is the state of being unmarried. Shira is the youngest daughter in the family, and at 18 is at an age to fulfil her destiny of marriage and motherhood. This is not 18 in a usual sense, it is 18 in a totally sheltered, middle aged closed Hasidic sense.

The location barely matters, as everything happens inside the community, and the outside barely registers more than passing traffic. As such, it is really set within any Hasidic Jewish community anywhere. It does not criticise or judge a way of life, and no one in the film questions or rebels, except by pleading to God for mercy for the hand that fate has dealt them.

When a young mother dies in childbirth, a void is created that must be filled. The baby must have a mother, the man must be married, and that’s the way it is within weeks.

Who is to fill that void? It is either Shira, uncomfortably stepping into her dead sister’s shoes; or the local embarrassment of an older unmarried woman; or a widow in a similar community is another country. No one’s happiness will be fulfilled. Everyone will have to lose something in order to keep the beloved baby grandson in the family and to maintain the order of things.

The film is fascinating in revealing how the business of marriage and life is settled in the Hasidic community. There is certainly wisdom there, and while the women are totally oppressed, the men also have little choice.

This is as much an examination about emotional illiteracy as it is a comment on being caught up in a system of life with little room for manoeuvre. Adult decisions that affect a person’s whole of life are negotiated in excruciating embarrassment and marriage is a series of compromises played off against each other. Slow burning and engrossing.

Eleanor MacFarlane

Read more reviews from the 56th London Film Festival here.

Watch the trailer for Fill the Void here:

Related Items

More in London Film Festival 2012

London Film Festival 2012 – day twelve: Great Expectations

Joey Godman
Read More

London Film Festival 2012: Song for Marion

Richard Taverner
Read More

London Film Festival 2012 – day ten: The Pervert’s Guide To Ideology

Joey Godman
Read More

London Film Festival 2012 – day ten: Sightseers

Joey Godman
Read More

London Film Festival 2012 – day eleven: Seven Psychopaths

Richard Taverner
Read More

London Film Festival 2012 – day nine: E Stato Il Figlio

Richard Taverner
Read More

London Film Festival 2012 – day nine: Simon Killer

Eleanor MacFarlane
Read More

London Film Festival 2012 – day nine: Starlet

Eleanor MacFarlane
Read More

London Film Festival 2012 – day eight: The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Joey Godman
Read More
Scroll for more
Tap
  • Popular

  • Latest

  • TOP PICKS

  • Albert Adrià reopens Enigma on 7 June as a “fun-dining” restaurant and cocktail bar
    Food & Drinks
  • The Road Dance
    ★★★★★
    Movie review
  • Paolo Nutini at the 100 Club
    ★★★★★
    Live music
  • Crimes of the Future: Three new clips from David Cronenberg’s dystopian body horror film
    Cannes
  • The Innocents
    ★★★★★
    Movie review
  • More than Ever (Plus que Jamais)
    ★★★★★
    Cannes
  • Plan 75
    ★★★★★
    Cannes
  • Enys Men
    ★★★★★
    Cannes
  • The Stranger
    ★★★★★
    Cannes
  • The Father and the Assassin at the National Theatre
    ★★★★★
    Theatre
  • More than Ever (Plus que Jamais)
    ★★★★★
    Cannes
  • Plan 75
    ★★★★★
    Cannes
  • Dirty Dancing the Movie in concert at Apollo Theatre
    ★★★★★
    Theatre
  • Feminine Power: The Divine to the Demonic at the British Museum
    ★★★★★
    Art
  • Eo (Hi-Han)
    ★★★★★
    Cannes
The Upcoming
Pages
  • Contact us
  • Join mailing list
  • Join us
  • Our London food map
  • Our writers
  • Support us
  • What, when, why
With the support from:
International driving license

Copyright © 2011-2020 FL Media

London Film Festival 2012 – day four: No
London Film Festival 2012 – day four: Ginger and Rosa