Keren Yedaya‘s That Lovely Girl (a.k.a., Loin De Mon Pere or Far From My Father) is a dull, dreary, self-indulgent film about a longterm father-daughter incestuous relationship. The film proves how the mere presentation of shocking or uncomfortable situational subject matter is not enough. You need to deliver a story of some kind, and a resolution that offers some sense of completion and/or just desserts. The monster is Moshe (Tzahi Grad), a 60 year-old father, and the victim is Tami (Maayan Turgeman), his 22 year-old daughter. It’s an acrimonious, highly sexual relationship that’s probably been going on for a decade. Cruel, horrific. All the more so given Tami’s compliance and emotional neediness and self-abuse (over-eating, cutting herself). In basic payoff terms Girl delivers far too little. No tension, no intrigue, no gathering of forces. The film is flat and odious. Sasha Stone hated it so that makes two of us. You can also add the five or six people who walked out of my corner of the Salle Debussy within the first 25 or 30 minutes.

Maayan Turgeman, Tzahi Grad in Keren Yedaya’s That Lovely Girl.

Sasha says That Lovely Girl is as icky and debilitating as Markus Schleinzer‘s Michael, an Austrian film about a child molester that played at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. Wrong. Michael “isn’t pleasant to watch,” I wrote, “but it’s brilliant — emotionally suppressed in a correct way that blends with the protagonist, and aesthetically disciplined and close to spellbinding.”