7 Days Ronit and Shlomi Elkabetz

Everything begins with a burial featuring gas masks. Maurice is dead. According to Jewish tradition the whole family must mourn for seven days in the house of their dear departed.

7 Days is the follow-up of To Take a Wife (2005) by Ronit and Shlomi Elkabetz. In it we catch up with Viviane (Ronit Elkabetz), who has still not obtained the divorce from her husband Eliahou (Simon Abkarian). The situation between the two forms just one of the intrigues of this film.

We are thus ushered into the closed environment of the house, with certain rooms forbidden because of the mourning. All family members must live together, a situation which gives birth to a sort of micro-society – complete with its leaders, its policemen and its outcasts.

Ronit and Schlomi Elkabetz film a societal nightmare: the disappearance of private lives in order to serve the group. One cannot cry alone, or smoke alone. Most of the discussions are interrupted by a door opening or the arrival of a character intruding into the field, ready to send you out of the forbidden room - a situation which has meaning in a country where the question of territory is problematic.

In this spatial context, the toilets can become the location of amorous intrigue, the bathroom the site of a revelation. The exchanges in the scenes in which everyone is seen together are reduced to a competition to see who is the most kosher. Those who have seen To Take a Wife will easily be able to guess who wins. What remains is a memorable sequence wherein the whole family has a nocturnal fit of hysterics.

The editing is elegant without being virtuose, the rhythm well-maintained and the direction of the cast exemplary. 7 Days is certainly not a film that will reconcile you with humankind, or even your family. It is however an example of what Israeli cinema does best. It also confirms, if it wasn’t already clear, that Ronit Elkabetz is one of the greatest actresses in the world.

Thierry Lebas