The Day After I'm Gone review – stylish study of a grieving father and daughter
Israeli film-maker Nimrod Eldar makes an accomplished and worthwhile feature debut with this very intelligent, character-driven drama, which he has written, directed and edited. A middleaged man in Tel Aviv, Yoram (Menashe Noy), is coming to terms with the death of his wife but failing to communicate with his 17-year-old daughter, Roni (Zohar Meidan), or understand her feelings. When she makes an unsuccessful attempt to take her own life, Yoram gets it into his head to take her on a healing road trip to visit his late wife’s relatives, people that he doesn’t at all get on with – especially his reactionary, gun-toting brother-in-law, Arie (Alon Neuman).
The opening 20 minutes of the film are superbly composed, especially the extraordinarily tense scene when police officers show up at the family apartment, having been informed by social media monitors that Roni has made suicidal posts online. Noy is very good at suggesting a man who has grumpily and bitterly retreated into himself, as a protection against being hurt any more than he already is. Meidan’s performance is also a model of care and sensitivity.
However, once we are with Yoram’s in-laws, the movie begins to spin its wheels just a little in terms of development and narrative progression, and I wondered if the story couldn’t have taken the personal story of Yoram or Roni further than it did. The conversation the two have about what would have happened in the day after Roni was gone, had her attempt not been discovered in time, is powerful and there is a wealth of incidental detail, especially the early scenes showing Yoram’s life as the vet at a safari park, operating on the animals, or his weird twilit existence as a semi-celebrity, having once had his 15 minutes of fame on reality television. There is more style than substance here, but stylish it undoubtedly is.
• The Day After I’m Gone is available on Mubi from 18 June.