VOYAGES

The war may be long past, but these three moving stories show the lasting effects of the Holocaust on three women.

Director Emmanuel Finkiel used to be an assistant director to the great Krzysztof Kieslowski, working with him on the Three Colors trilogy. The influence of Kieslowski can be felt, in positive ways in Finkiel's film Voyages... which feels, in a way, like three lost episodes of his mentor's Dekalog.

The first segment follows a bus tour of elderly French Jews on a bus tour of Poland. They visit the Jewish cemetery in Warsaw. Their bus breaks down on a country road. And eventually they make it to Auschwitz. The story focuses on Rivka (Shulamit Adar, who looks like a sister of Judi Dench), a French woman who has been living in Israel. She is on the tour with her husband, hoping for some personal closure of her past. The closer the tour gets to the final destination of the preserved death camp, the more estranged and alienated she feels from her husband of many years.

The second segment takes place in Paris, where a middle-aged woman, Régine (Liliane Rovère), gets a phone call from a man in Lithuania who claims to be her elderly father whom she thought died in a concentration camp. He comes to visit, a father that she barely remembers, and they go through the motions of trying to find a common past together, despite the fact that some facts don't quite match up.

The final segment follows an elderly woman Vera (Esther Gorintin) as she pulls up roots to join a young family from Russia that moves to Israel to start a new life. Her only connection is a long lost cousin, whom she hasn't heard from in 25 years, but she thinks lives in Tel Aviv. The story follows sweet, gnome-like Vera (played by a woman who has never acted before), as she determinedly goes from one end of modern, bustling, and hectic Tel Aviv to the other, just to find her only remaining relative.

Voyages is beautifully and quietly filmed. The lead actresses are excellent, and their stories are moving. Emmanuel Finkiel works extremely well with his actors, and has created a memorable and touching film—sad, but full of hope. I look forward to his next film.