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DVD Snails in the Rain
 Run time: 82 min Rating: 6.4 Genres: Drama Director: Yariv Mozer Writers: Yossi Avni Levy, Yariv Mozer Stars: Yoav Reuveni, Yehuda Nahari, Yariv Mozer |
| Storyline Tel Aviv, Summer 1989. Boaz, a beautiful and alluring linguistics student, receives anonymous, male written love letters,that undermines his sexual identity and interfere his peaceful life with his beloved girlfriend. |
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| Plot Keywords: army, gay crush, circle jerk, nudity, masturbation | |
| Details: Country: Israel Release Date: 20 June 2013 (Israel) |
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| Box Office Budget: ILS 1,000,000 (estimated) |
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DVD Snails in the Rain
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It's 1989, Boaz (Yoav Eruveni), an extremely alluring and captivating linguistic student is receiving anonymous letters. He goes everyday to the post office to check on the status of a pending scholarship. Instead, he receives obsessive letters detailing very inner feelings from someone very close to him who's invaded his inner peace with emotionally suggestive and romantic overtones. These letters have a deteriorating effect on his psyche as well as his relationship with live in girlfriend Noah (Moran Rosenblatt). As the letters progressively consume the daily thoughts and dealing of Boaz, his inner anguish is unleashed upon his girlfriend, hence having a threatening and corroding effect on him. Paranoia takes over when everyone he meets becomes a possible suspect of the daily correspondence. Doubt ensues as a very conflicted, emotionally fragile and volatile Boaz goes on a quest to find himself while trying to maintain some semblance of sanity as he comes to grips with the reality that his life will no longer be the same courtesy of this secret admirer. Filmmaker Yariv Mozer has assembled an eloquent, intriguing and sexually charged whodunnit drama that slowly unravels the different layers of the main characters inner self. The arrivals of these letter are only the catalyst to which the main character reacts in order to find and deal with his inner demons. Once he's found the cause for the way he's feeling, his passage to acceptance ultimately prove to be sobering and freeing.
This is an excellent and involving film from Israel which reflects the many conflicting layers of despair as the hidden realities of relationships within the confines of higher education propels true feelings to surface forcing the conflicting main character to find himself in the process, as he tries his hardest to blend in with family and society's expectations.
A very very dense and captivating drama of how sexuality and love or not being loved affects people. Firstly, the camera work makes you follow every second of it tensely, from the very beginning on you feel and see like the main character and follow his every look, and every man you see you think this could be the one writing the letters, but you are never sure and then, secondly, when you meet the girlfriend, you feel as if you know exactly what she's thinking, all in all, their change from being really close to growing apart is portrayed very natural. And then, thirdly, when you learn who the writer is, you can hardly believe it, cause all the hints were so subtle, it could have been everyone, and for him being as confused, it's just normal that he doesn't know, but his girlfriend looking at it from an outside point of view realizes it immediately. And the writers feelings are transported very well, too. In the very end, you feel his sadness and loneliness, and you are able to connect the things you read in the letters to the person. The acting is in general just great! And I love that the whole film is packed of small details and hints and unexplained but understandable things and unspoken reactions and actions, I hate it when it's all to obvious and clumsy!And even the flashbacks, which is often used very badly and unfittingly or just halfway, is done well! I would have liked to see how the whole thing in the army turned out, how it affected him today, but well, the flashback thing still made sense. the only thing that's a little weird is how the writer could get all the information he has about Boaz.