Review: Asia Delicately Attests to the Ties that Bind a Mother and Daughter

Asia is Ruthy Pribar’s feature-length directorial debut, but it evinces an old hand’s confidence.

Asia
Photo: Menemsha Films

Writer-director Ruthy Pribar’s Asia opens—in what is perhaps the only purely ebullient sequence in the film—with the eponymous character (Alena Yiv) partying and flirting at a nightclub. Asia works as a nurse and is a single mother to the teenaged Vika (Shira Haas), but given her carefree attitude at the club on what turns out to be a work night, you’d be forgiven for thinking she was a teen herself.

That’s not to say that Asia is completely immature. Indeed, in its sensitive portrayal of Asia and Vika’s relationship, the film gently blurs the traditional distinctions between mother and daughter, namely by placing Asia and Vika on somewhat equal footing. Despite the coolness between the two women, Pribar implies through their behaviors that the two are cut from the same cloth: Both suffer from a youthful capriciousness and a casual approach to adult responsibilities. And just as Asia and Vika make for an unorthodox pair, Pribar tells their story in unorthodox fashion—a fitting decision that yields immensely moving results.

Asia is Pribar’s feature-length directorial debut, but it evinces an old hand’s confidence. The narrative is constructed almost entirely of seemingly offhand incidents, the accumulation of which Pribar initially uses to elegantly expose layers of her characters’ personas. But it isn’t until Asia reaches its turning point, when a medical condition that Vika suffers from becomes confines her to a wheelchair, that these moments retroactively take on a greater emotional weight and importance. Normal acts, like trying to lose her virginity, or even simply hanging out in a club like her mother does, are now beyond the realm of possibility for Vika.

Advertisement

Pribar notably and purposefully refuses to focus on the details of Vika’s condition. For one, we don’t get the obligatory scene of a doctor giving her a prognosis, nor is her specific illness even disclosed. Rather than define her relationship to Asia, Vika’s illness tinges their time together with a bittersweet quality. Pribar lingers on small moments in the wake of trauma, positioning them as the impetus that strengthens the characters’ connection. In a particularly lovely sequence, Asia and Vika share a cigarette on their apartment balcony and scrutinize each other’s smoking, sparking them to divulge hidden secrets to one another.

The film’s emotional power is never dulled despite the inclusion of a subplot in which Asia has a fellow nurse, Gabi (Tamir Mula), help Vika to lose her virginity before it’s too late. This narrative strand is quietly unsettling, for the way that Gabi goes along with the proposition, but also somewhat trivial given how quickly it’s resolved. In a way, though, the subplot’s conciseness is consistent with Pribar’s overall presentation of Vika’s illness; the filmmaker understands the importance of this moment but recognizes that it will not come to define Ava and Vika’s time together. As Pribar movingly articulates, the ostensibly minor joys and pitfalls of people’s lives are paradoxically the things that can linger longest in the mind.

Score: 
 Cast: Alena Yiv, Shira Haas, Tamir Mula, Gera Sandler, Eden Halili  Director: Ruthy Pribar  Screenwriter: Ruthy Pribar  Distributor: Menemsha Films  Running Time: 85 min  Rating: NR  Year: 2020

Wes Greene

Wes Greene is a film writer based out of Philadelphia.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.