Tel Aviv, 1 9 4 7. Sami (15), his brother and two sisters live with their widowed mother Clara. All were wealthy Egyptian Jews who immigrated to British Mandate of Palestine and now live in poverty, in a small apartment. Clara works as a cleaning lady. Sami skips school and finds a job as a locksmith to earn money for the family, but a communist employee, Max, starts a strike, thereby halting the workshop. Sami meets librarian Sonia (25) who becomes his first love interest. He also joins the Jewish independence paramilitary group Irgun. The British soldiers arrest Nissim, who was courting Clara. As the Israeli War of Independence is about to start, and the Arab clashes start, Sami enlists into the Jewish military and leaves his home.
A semi-autobiographical, gentle 'coming-of-age' drama by Moshe Mizrahi, "The House on Chelouche Street" is an overall good, albeit standard film with underwritten, mediocre dialogue. A lot of the threads are connected to the specific Jewish mentality and (immigration) history, depicting a 'rough' and problematic emergence of proto-Israel: the Egyptian Jewish family were wealthy, but had to "shock adapt" to a different life in Tel Aviv where they live in poverty in a small apartment (the five of them sleep in one bedroom), whereas Mizrahi creates a good reconstruction of the rarely depicted life in the British Mandate of Palestine. Teenage protagonist Sami undergoes a crash course in growing up, from skipping school, finding a job, meeting his first love, and then having to enlist to military to fight in the war. In one notable, but somewhat banal moment, mother Clara serves dinner to her four kids, but the daughter protests: "Why does Sami get to have meat?" Clara responds: "Because he is the only one who works, he needs energy". Sami takes pity, grabs the meat from his plate and places it on his sister's plate. The sister eats it, but Clara slaps her for punishment. Except for a beautiful 4-minute love / sex sequence between the bashful Sami (15) and librarian Sonia (25) in bed, some halfway into the film, the rest is solid, yet somewhat routine, without major artistic lift-offs, making "Chelouche" not that different than many other similar films, though Mizrahi's sympathies for the characters are endearing.
Grade:++
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