Jellyfish (Unrated) *** | Surreal Israeli tale rides wave of magic

BY KENNETH TURAN

Los Angeles Times Service

Seductive and intoxicating, playfully surreal and inexplicably moving, Jellyfish is almost impossible to pin down or even categorize. Artistic, daring, surprising, it resists fitting into words.

Jellyfish introduces its trio of protagonists in the most casual way possible, as the camera all but randomly focuses on them at a big Tel Aviv wedding reception. At this party and afterward, these characters don't know the others exist, but the audience observes them more or less bumping into each other in ways only we are aware of.

Batya (Sarah Adler) is as close as Jellyfish gets to an actual protagonist. A young woman whose haphazard life is noticeably falling apart, barely able to function as a waitress at the reception, Batya ends up taking care of a sweet but willful 5-year-old girl who runs up to her out of the sea but refuses to talk.

Also ending up with unexpected communications difficulties are Keren (Noa Knoller) and Michael (Gera Sandler), the happy couple at the wedding Batya is working. But after a freak occurrence hampers Keren's mobility, the couple's projected Caribbean honeymoon deteriorates into psychological chaos.

Having the most trouble communicating is Joy (Ma-nenita De Latorre), a Filipino woman who speaks only English. She's voluntarily separated herself from her young son back home in order to work as a caregiver in Israel, filling in for people who are too busy to deal with their own lives.

Although it doesn't make a big deal of it, Jellyfish is enlivened by moments of what could be called Israeli magic realism. A photo album comes to life, a young couple talk in front of a beautiful sky that turns out to be an enormous truck, a policeman makes a toy boat out of an official report and blows it across his desk. This is a world where anything can happen, and often does.

Many of the characters in Jellyfish seem part of a new Israeli lost generation that has to deal with frustrations, missed opportunities and the elusive nature of happiness, with the difficulties of forming meaningful human connections in a chaotic time.

Yet if this sounds downbeat, the pleasure of Jellyfish is that it is anything but glum. The film has a sense of the genial absurdity of life, a whimsical appreciation of the inescapable randomness of our anything-can-happen existence, of how fragile yet resilient are the bonds that draw people together.

Underlying Jellyfish'ssense that the world is a more remarkable place than we may imagine is its willingness to embrace surrealism as a story element. Working with a remarkable sureness of touch, the film's directors understand that what's imaginary and what's real can be made to look exactly the same on film, and that what makes logical sense is less important than deeper emotional truth. Yes, Jellyfish says, it's a wonderful life, not in that old-fashioned style we've perhaps tired of but in a surprising new and magical way all its own.

Cast: Sarah Adler, Tsipor Aizen, Bruria Albek, Ilanit Ben-Yaakov

Directors: Shira Geffen, Etgar Keret

Writer: Shira Geffen

Producers: Yael Fogiel, Laetitia Gonzalez, Amir Harel, Ayelet Kit

A Zeitgeist Films release. Running time: 78 minutes. In Hebrew with English subtitles. In Miami-Dade: Intracoastal. In Broward: Sunrise 11.