The Secret at the Philadelphia Jewish Film Festival

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The Secret at the Philadelphia Jewish Film Festival

POSTED: Friday, October 31, 2008, 5:00 PM

Filed Under: Movies Film Fest

The camera pans over three women in a mineral pool as they pant heavily, calling for god's forgiveness. They dip their heads below the water and resurface, gasping for air as their viewer catches a glance of their holy pubes. Raw, sensual and restrained all at once, The Secrets is a movie about the sacred bonds between women.

Naomi, the daughter of a well-respected Israeli rabbi, chooses to buck tradition and attend seminary rather than marry her finance. At Safed, the "Seminary of Knowledge and Truth," buttoned-up Naomi meets Michelle, a cigarette smoking, rebellious French girl. Together they decide to save the soul of a local woman who was cast out after she murdered her husband. As a woman, Naomi cannot become a rabbi, so she takes matters into her own hands and performs a series of ancient Jewish sacraments on the woman to win god's forgiveness.

Each woman is an outsider in her own rite — the too smart girl who doesn't want to marry, the fat girl no one wants, the feminist headmistress and the woman who murdered for love. In Orthodox society, women are not counted fully as people. These women use this non-recognition by tradition to forge their own quiet agency.

The Secrets, Mon., Nov. 3, 7 p.m., $10, Gershman Y, 401 S. Broad St., pjff.org.

Read Timothy J. McLaughlin's review of Strangers, also playing at this year's PJFF.

Jonathan

Posted 2009-05-27 13:53:38

Can you please email me telling me where i can go and find this movie?

Posted by Campbell States @ 5:00 PM Permalink | Post a comment

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