Men — can’t live with them ... can’t live with them

Men are crap the world over. If that sounds too misandristic, I can soften it and say that men can be crap the world over. But it’s clearly part of the take-away from In Between, a first feature from Hungarian-born, IsraeliPalestinian filmmaker Maysaloun Hamoud.

Her film, set in Tel Aviv, follows three young Palestinian women who are sharing a flat.

Leila (Mouna Hawa) is a criminal lawyer with a Jewish boyfriend. Salma (Sana Jammelieh) bounces between waitressing, bartending and DJ jobs; she’s also a lesbian. And newcomer Noor (Shaden Kanboura) is a student and an observant Muslim with a fiancé.

Their issues mostly revolve around romantic entanglements, so much so that Hamoud could have boosted the comedic gain on this one and turned it into a kind of Sex and the Israeli City. (Are you a Salma or a Noor?) Instead, she keeps it mostly serious, and most deeply when Noor’s fiancé, in a fit of rage over her “immoral” roommates, rapes her.

Issues of religious and sexual freedom are played out in all three lives.

Leila’s boyfriend makes an interesting point about how, as a society, we dress the way others want, and meanwhile eat what we want.

But as a man he’s not much constrained in either realm, while Leila and the others, in spite of being educated, employed and (for want of a better term) Westernized, find themselves constantly restricted by parents, boyfriends and fiancés.

Their solutions range from running — one woman says she’s moving to Berlin — to more drastic head-on action, as when the three plan to blackmail one of their tormentors.

If the film has a flaw it’s that these strategies seem to go forth without the hiccups and backfires one expects in real life. Nonetheless, In Between is well crafted for a first film, and heralds a strong new voice in world cinema.