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88A beautifully strange movie.
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Like a Keret story, Jellyfish is economical – a mere 78 minutes – but it packs into its taut, intersecting storylines a charming melancholy and a surprisingly rich depth.
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83Marvelously inventive, often-ironic Israeli storyteller Etgar Keret and his life- and workmate, Shira Geffen, spin in Jellyfish a dreamy, arty, alluringly cockeyed tale involving three unrelated women in Tel Aviv.
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83What gives the film a haunting and sometimes droll poetic unity is the way co-directors Etgar Keret and Shira Geffen trace all their characters moving in a jellyfish-like fashion.
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80Yes, Jellyfish says, it's a wonderful life, not in that old-fashioned style we've perhaps tired of but in a surprising new and magical way all its own.
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80Tightly constructed, cleverly stylized, serio-comic ensemble piece. Highly cinematic, with a mood of existential loneliness leavened by magical whimsy, its different story strands share themes including the need for affection and the struggle to communicate.
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75These stories have as their justification that fact that they are intrinsically interesting. I think that's enough.
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75There's enough material here for a miniseries, but the directors keep the proceedings to 78 brisk minutes without making the viewer feel cheated.
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75The scale is small, but Jellyfish has deep currents.
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75Not for all tastes, but produces haunting juxtapositions.
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Several stories, or scraps of stories, are woven together in the making of Jellyfish ("Meduzot"), linked by common themes and a shared sense of humor, poetry and loss.
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70I appreciated and admired the craftsmanship of Jellyfish more than I loved it, and I found its whimsical, magic-realist touches a bit cloying. Just as I began to appreciate that it had depths I hadn't perceived, it was over.
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70An Israeli movie with neither politics nor religion--and only one casual, if fraught, mention of the Holocaust--bespeaks an underlying desire for normality that's as poignant and fantastic as Keret and Geffen's modest, shabby Tel Aviv settings.
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70The film's spirit is refreshingly playful and sweet.
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70An interlocking ensemble piece in the tradition of "Crash" and "Babel," but with welcome dashes of whimsy and magical realism.
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70The overlapping stories pulse with a tidal rhythm, the film's sensibility flowing between serious and wry, and there are memorable turns from Assi Dayan as the waitress's henpecked dad and Tzahi Grad as a cop with a nonchalant attitude toward babysitting.
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67Jellyfish is the kind of film that will ring true for some viewers, while striking others as too slight and precious.
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63In spite of the entropy, Jellyfish is close to a comedy, with a gentle sense of absurdism and a welcome generosity toward its characters.
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50I have an aversion to such intricately interlocked movies as "Babel" or "Crash" -- for all their pretensions and astral connections they're basically stunts -- and my feelings about Jellyfish are much the same. But this film is handsomely made, and I won't soon forget the almost Jungian image of a wide-eyed child -- emerging from the sea with a red and white lifesaver around her little belly.
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40When I ask myself what it is that these women in the movie want, I come up with bubkes.
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20Although it runs 78 minutes, it feels like 78 hours.
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Positive: 2 out of 2
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Mixed: 0 out of 2
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Negative: 0 out of 2
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WodekS10An original film beautifully edited with lyrical flair.
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BillC10An amazing film. Every moment, every minor character, every line carries significance to the whole. Stunning.