A young British girl relocates with her father to Jerusalem, where she
befriends a Palestinian girl only she can see.
Review by
Benjamin Poole
Directed by: Muayad Alayan
Starring: Johnny Harris, Miley Locke, Sheherazade Farrell, Souad Faress, Rebecca Calder
How much do you miss your imaginary friends? As a desperately lonely but
happy minded little boy I was a prime patsy for such figments of fancy.
Here's the strange thing, though: my imaginary friends were specifically
associated with certain locations, and never followed me beyond those
places. For example, one friend, Snooky, would only hang out with me at my
Grandmother's and nowhere else. To the extent that visiting my dear old
nan, who was the live-in matron of a retirement home, became more than
anything an opportunity to hang out with Snooky and hear the strange
things she would tell me of my life and what was about to occur in it:
predictions which I couldn't have guessed at, but which always came true
(a teacher committing suicide, a cousin getting pregnant - no cap, on God,
etc). Until one day I stopped believing and Snooky disappeared. 27 years
old, I was... Forgive the whimsy, but it's been an emotional week, and
perhaps this is why Muayad Alayan's (with screenplay credits shared
with Rami Musa Alayan) A House in Jerusalem, with its rosewater focus on childhood imagination and sentiment, hit so
hard.
Rebecca (Miley Locke) is an adolescent Jewish girl mired in grief.
Following the death of her mother in a car accident, Rebecca's erstwhile
father Michael (a soulful and none more dad-like Johnny Harris)
inherits the exceptionally enviable titular abode which the pair
subsequently move to from their native England. Compounding the alienation
which Rebecca is already undergoing, the property seems to be haunted by
the spirit of a Palestinian child named Rasha (Sheherazade Farrell). Whereas most adults would full on shit themselves at the prospect of a
supernatural entity, as ever, Rebecca, a little girl, is made of stronger
stuff. Following an initial trepidation, Rebecca treats the spirit with
the sort of care and respect and curiosity which was sorely absent in her
apparently curtailed existence.
Rasha manifests in association with water and has a doll which floats,
Ophelia like, upon dark currents. The juxtaposition of spooky figurines
with glass glaring eyes, cold water and spectral girls has become an
instinctive trope yet A House in Jerusalem manages to use
these genre markers in ways that are freshly creepy: Rasha "lives" in the
well, which is (hazardously) placed smack within the scrubland yard of the
palatial home. There is a feeling of restriction associated with Rasha
which contrasts the empty dimensions of Rebecca's new home, with its
unfamiliar space and strange ingresses. Alayan orchestrates the hauntings
within with delicacy - a particularly unsettling moment involves Rebecca
looking up at the house and curtains being violently shut by hands unknown
and unseen, a weird twist upon an everyday motion.
As you've probably guessed, there is a metaphor at work here within this
microcosmic Jerusalem domicile which used to be owned by one family and is
now the settling place of a completely different group of people (counting
Dad's new squeeze, an unwelcome indication of time cruelly moving on for
Rebecca). Yet, A House in Jerusalem is never didactic in its
ideology. The two girls are heartbreakingly affected by a conflict beyond
their understanding and influence, united in their desperate grief over
missing mothers. What it reminded me most of is the archaic folksy horror
which used to be broadcast on British children's telly and is now the
stuff of prized DVDs or obscure YouTube dives: gems like
Children of the Stones, Chocky, Dramarama (in particular the spooky
The Exorcism of Amy). The pacing has that same gently unfolding feel, and the child
protagonists are not only the conduit for scares but also derring agents
of dramatic change. In the film's final scenes, the mind-bending
implications of what the hauntings actually constitute has the same
surprising and devastating malice of those bygone shows, too.
A House in Jerusalem lingers in the imagination.
A House in Jerusalem is on UK/ROI VOD now.
