A Bottle in the Gaza Sea

A touching and inspired variation on Romeo and Juliet, this French feature film stars Agathe Bonitzer as Tal, a 17-year-old French girl living in Jerusalem with her parents and older brother, Eytan (Abraham Belaga), a soldier in the Israeli army. After a suicide bomber kills customers at a café near Tal's home, she asks Eytan to throw her paper message of outreach—stuffed in a bottle—into the Gaza Sea, hoping a random Palestinian will find it and e-mail her in order to start some kind of open communication. Tal hears from a young man named Naim (Mahmoud Shalabi), a dispirited worker who has never left Gaza and whose dreams are subdued by chronic hopelessness. Despite skepticism and occasional hostility, Naim warms to Tal, who gradually inspires him to reach beyond his limited world and possibilities. Similarly, Tal's restlessness in life, and her dissatisfaction with the status quo in relations between the Israeli government and Palestinians, find an outlet in her virtual friendship with Naim. Based on a popular YA novel by Valérie Zenatti, filmmaker Thierry Binisti's A Bottle in the Gaza Sea is a fine film that catches the viewer up in the aspirations of two people, set against a backdrop of war and hatred. Recommended. (T. Keogh)