Pot
is like old age. They both cause memory loss, so Eyal Spivak might as well
light up. He has never smoked before, but some medical marijuana happens to
come his way, so it would be a shame to let it go to waste. It sounds
nauseatingly quirky but the mood is scrupulously mournful throughout Asaph
Polonsky’s One Week and a Day (trailer here), which is now
playing in New York.
Eyal
and Vicky Spivak have just finished sitting shiva for Ronnie, their son of blessed
memory when their estranged friends the Zoolers finally show up. Basically,
Eyal shows them to the door and their cucumber salad to the garbage. Clearly,
they both surviving parents are still struggling with their grief. Returning to
the hospice on a dubious mission to reclaim a blanket, old man Spivak is given
a bag of you know what by the failing new occupant of Ronnie’s room.
Spivak
seeks solace from its medicinal benefits, but his lack of rolling skills forces
him to bury the hatchet with the Zoolers’ slacker son, known simply as Zooler. The
old grouch and the sushi deliveryman will sort of renew Zooler’s lapsed
friendship with Ronnie, by proxy, but Vicky is a different story.
One Week is being marketed
as a pot-friendly film, but old Spivak spaces out some pretty important
business thanks to his partaking. Granted, this indirectly leads to a humanistic
epiphany of sorts, but he would still probably be better off if he had just
said no (yes, it turns out Nancy Reagan was right all along).
This
is a small film, but it has some rather touching things to say about grief,
parental love, and friendship. Shai Avivi (who is described as the “Larry David
of Israel, but don’t let that dissuade you) is perfectly cast as the grieving
grump and Tomer Kapon is appropriately scruffy but not excessively sticky as
Zooler. However, Alon Shauloff is absolutely winning as the young hospice girl
the two mismatched stoners take under their wings, while Uri Gavriel completely
steals the film with a devastating third act eulogy.
