As soon as I read the description of "Hey Hey It's Esther Blueburger" on the DVD box I wanted to rent the film. I've never seen an Australian movie about Jewish people; moreover, I've never come across very many accounts of Australian Jews.
"Hey Hey It's Esther Blueburger" is unusual; while there are many films that reference Bar Mitzvahs, the coming of age ceremony for Jewish boys, I can't think of any other movie that features the Bat Mitzvah, the ceremony for girls. It's very quirky, like "1966", which portrays a British boy worrying about his upcoming Bar Mitzvah ceremony and party during the summer of that year, while England was hosting the World Cup. However, while "1966" presents the Bar Mitzvah boy and his parents and their friends as multilayered individuals, Esther and her friend Sonni are the most fully realised characters in "Esther Blueburger". Esther's parents are stereotypes of the upwardly mobile but distant mother and father. The audience doesn't discover why it's so important to them to send their children to private schools. After Esther's brother claims he's been suffering from anti-Semitism at his school, he's sent to a Jewish private school, but Esther isn't asked to attend the school as well. Perhaps it's an all boys school, but I would think they would also try to protect their daughter from prejudice and find a Jewish girls' school for her. At any rate, I found Esther's brother the most interesting of all the characters aside from the two female leads; his conversion from a number obsessed nerd bordering on violent weirdo to a devout praying stickler for ritual at the dining table is very funny. I loved how he insisted on saying a blessing at the dining table and made his father cover his head with a napkin: he reminded me of many of my Jewish friends I met at school growing up in Miami.
The film would have benefited from further exploring what Judaism signifies to Esther and her family; aside from their accents, the relatives at the Bat/Bar Mitzvah party are straight out of central casting for any Bar Mitzvah sequence in a Hollywood movie. The story the father tells about the bread falling schmaltz side up feels authentic at first, but alas otherwise the Jewishness is portrayed as schmaltz -- or shtick, rather.
So too is Esther's journey as she tries to truly become a woman. It felt like many films and made for TV movies about girls struggling to break away from their upbringing and find their identities as adults. I smiled at Esther customising her Bat Mitzvah dress, turning the yellow embroidered ruffles into a multi layered mini dress with a halter top, and covering her white high heels with red glitter. Her makeover doesn't go much further than cosmetic. I can't see how her Swedish act would win over the public school girls and her private school fellows so quickly. Her transformation seems like a fantasy she dreams up after being emotionally shattered by the brutality of her school and the girls her mother wants her to befriend: it comes too easily, and too painlessly, aside from her split from Sonni and the loss of Sonni's mother. I agree that the nightclub scenes are too gritty; surely Esther would love to dress up for clubbing and maybe take a swig of booze but at her age would find wandering the strip and giving boys oral sex way too frightening. I take the point that she scared Sonni by behaving coarsely, but that was suggested by Esther mugging her old school friend for her raincoat. I wish I could have just walked in another school and life so smoothly, without the school ever contacting my parents or challenging me about my absence. Furthermore, it's not clear why Sonni is sent to the Ladies College once in her relatives' care.
"Hey Hey It's Esther Blueburger" is an entertaining movie about the passage from adolescence to young adulthood, and teenage girls would certainly find much in it that they could identify with. But it doesn't travel much further than the stages usually followed by films about young girls growing up. It's a shame, because the film has the potential to be an engrossing study of how Esther and her family find new ways of fulfilling themselves and engaging with their community.
"Hey Hey It's Esther Blueburger" is unusual; while there are many films that reference Bar Mitzvahs, the coming of age ceremony for Jewish boys, I can't think of any other movie that features the Bat Mitzvah, the ceremony for girls. It's very quirky, like "1966", which portrays a British boy worrying about his upcoming Bar Mitzvah ceremony and party during the summer of that year, while England was hosting the World Cup. However, while "1966" presents the Bar Mitzvah boy and his parents and their friends as multilayered individuals, Esther and her friend Sonni are the most fully realised characters in "Esther Blueburger". Esther's parents are stereotypes of the upwardly mobile but distant mother and father. The audience doesn't discover why it's so important to them to send their children to private schools. After Esther's brother claims he's been suffering from anti-Semitism at his school, he's sent to a Jewish private school, but Esther isn't asked to attend the school as well. Perhaps it's an all boys school, but I would think they would also try to protect their daughter from prejudice and find a Jewish girls' school for her. At any rate, I found Esther's brother the most interesting of all the characters aside from the two female leads; his conversion from a number obsessed nerd bordering on violent weirdo to a devout praying stickler for ritual at the dining table is very funny. I loved how he insisted on saying a blessing at the dining table and made his father cover his head with a napkin: he reminded me of many of my Jewish friends I met at school growing up in Miami.
The film would have benefited from further exploring what Judaism signifies to Esther and her family; aside from their accents, the relatives at the Bat/Bar Mitzvah party are straight out of central casting for any Bar Mitzvah sequence in a Hollywood movie. The story the father tells about the bread falling schmaltz side up feels authentic at first, but alas otherwise the Jewishness is portrayed as schmaltz -- or shtick, rather.
So too is Esther's journey as she tries to truly become a woman. It felt like many films and made for TV movies about girls struggling to break away from their upbringing and find their identities as adults. I smiled at Esther customising her Bat Mitzvah dress, turning the yellow embroidered ruffles into a multi layered mini dress with a halter top, and covering her white high heels with red glitter. Her makeover doesn't go much further than cosmetic. I can't see how her Swedish act would win over the public school girls and her private school fellows so quickly. Her transformation seems like a fantasy she dreams up after being emotionally shattered by the brutality of her school and the girls her mother wants her to befriend: it comes too easily, and too painlessly, aside from her split from Sonni and the loss of Sonni's mother. I agree that the nightclub scenes are too gritty; surely Esther would love to dress up for clubbing and maybe take a swig of booze but at her age would find wandering the strip and giving boys oral sex way too frightening. I take the point that she scared Sonni by behaving coarsely, but that was suggested by Esther mugging her old school friend for her raincoat. I wish I could have just walked in another school and life so smoothly, without the school ever contacting my parents or challenging me about my absence. Furthermore, it's not clear why Sonni is sent to the Ladies College once in her relatives' care.
"Hey Hey It's Esther Blueburger" is an entertaining movie about the passage from adolescence to young adulthood, and teenage girls would certainly find much in it that they could identify with. But it doesn't travel much further than the stages usually followed by films about young girls growing up. It's a shame, because the film has the potential to be an engrossing study of how Esther and her family find new ways of fulfilling themselves and engaging with their community.