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Phnom Pehn Lullaby
Pawel Kloc (Poland, International Spectrum)
Monday, May 2, 9:45 p.m.
TIFF Bell Lightbox 3 (350 King Street West)
Wednesday, May 4, 4 p.m.
Cumberland 2 (159 Cumberland Street)
Sunday, May 5, 5:45 p.m.
TIFF Bell Lightbox 4 (350 King Street West)
It’s too tempting to describe Phnom Penh Lullaby as a “portrait of life on the fringes” or something. Because really, any interesting doc is about life on the fringes. Nobody would make a film about some white guy who wakes up and goes to work and watches Mike and Molly and falls asleep. But there’s “life on the fringes” and then there’s being an Israeli-expat working as a fortune teller in Cambodia, whose girlfriend may be killing your baby with her poisoned breast milk.
Against a backdrop of child prostitution, gun shots, glue-huffing, and thematically apropos consuming darkness, Pawel Kloc’s first feature tails Ilan, a tarot card reader who left Israel to start a new life in Cambodia. His alcoholic girlfriend, Saran, pressures him to get married and move back to Israel. (“Where’s Hollywood?” she asks earnestly, when Ian shows her his homeland on a map.) Saran has a baby with Ilan, one from a father living in Singapore, a couple more who have been adopted by Canadians—and there are intimations of others whose fates remain unknown. With this hanging in the background, it’s the lot of Ilan and Saran’s daughter that rests at Lullaby‘s emotional core.
No doubt, Kloc has crafted a complex, riveting, and monumentally despairing film. But it almost feels like emotional porn, especially as it sinks towards its climactic domestic blowout. But tricky though it may be to parse its ethics, Kloc’s film is doubtlessly powerful: a problematic portrait on life way, way, way, way on the fringes.