Film Review: THE FUTURE: Noam Kaplan’s Interesting Film is Brief but Heavy on Fascinating, Complex Themes [Tribeca 2023]

The Future Review

The Future (2023) Film Review from the 22nd Annual Tribeca Film Festival, a movie written and directed by Noam Kaplan and starring Reymonde Amsallem, Samar Qupty, Aviva Ger, Salwa Nakkara and Dar Zuzovsky.

Some movies are just so original that viewers can sit in amazement at how the filmmaker even thought of the idea. In Noam Kaplan’s emotionally complex dramatic film, The Future, the audience will be spellbound by the two central performances in the picture by Reymonde Amsallem and Samar Qupty as two very different women who learn they may have more in common than they originally thought even though they are on totally opposite ends of the spectrum. Amsallem has the more difficult role because she plays an older character (Dr. Nurit Bloch) who thought she had a grasp on what she was doing in her life until her interaction with Qupty’s much younger character, Yaffa, proves her all wrong. That still doesn’t lessen the quality of Qupty’s tremendous performance.

Dr. Bloch goes through life trusting algorithms in her life. When she meets the Palestinian student Yaffa (who has admittedly murdered the Israeli head of Space and Tourism), her theories in life seem to be debunked. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Yaffa’s actions should have been predicted before they happened and stopped. However, in Kaplan’s film, things are not black and white and complexity saturates the entire story line.

Bloch and Yaffa have some tense scenes together as Bloch asks Yaffa how she took out the man she had murdered. Yaffa re-enacts the scenario for Bloch but the latter is still baffled by how the turn of events came to be. This premise has a very interesting backstory which is slowly revealed to the viewer in piecemeal fashion.

Integrated into the story is the theme of a spaceship called “Hope” heading to the moon. Bloch is interested in developments regarding how this will turn out. More personally, however, Bloch has a surrogate she has enlisted to have her child. That surrogate is named Maor and is played quite well by Dar Zuzovsky in a hopeful but naive way that challenges the character of Bloch immensely.

Mother-daughter bonds are explored in The Future and, at times, Bloch could be seen as a mother-type figure to Yaffa. Their on-screen dynamic is the stuff some of the best movie character interactions are made of. Yaffa challenges Bloch to see things differently and to understand that certain ways of thinking are impossible to uphold in the world today. Things may happen for a reason or they may not, but the “future” is something which has no default method of predicting. The future is just as complex as the past and the present. Bloch’s interaction with her own mother is curious to watch and, without revealing too much, speaks volumes about the way these two characters see the world. Their relationship is explored with great precision. The most interesting aspect of the film is that a female daughter is expected for Bloch which would continue and possibly change the mother-daughter dynamic in the family if the child was actually to come into fruition.

Though Bloch and Yaffa are different in terms of age, their thoughts on life complement each other in profound ways which makes the movie impossible to steer away from. While the film’s themes are thought-provoking and in some respects, groundbreaking, the movie has some flaws. The last minutes of the film become very difficult to behold as the movie reveals some disturbing information that may prove a bit unsettling to viewers. Still, it should be seen because of the tension created by the performances of Amsallem and Qupty who play off each other like masters of the acting game. Zuzovksy captures the mannerisms of her character to a tee in another noteworthy performance.

Amsallem’s heart-wrenching performance as Bloch is unique because, at first, it portrays the character as a by-the-book woman who has tremendous knowledge about the way the world works but after her interaction with Yaffa, her whole perspective seems to have changed somewhat. The Future is the type of movie that can completely captivate the audience even if it’s not perfect. However, clocking in at under 80-minutes, there’s the great need for even more depth to be revealed regarding this film’s overall premise. This is the perfect movie to remake with a bigger budget but stands out on its own as a powerful piece of independent film-making. Noam Kaplan is officially on the map as a director to watch thanks to the ambitious and successful movie that is The Future.

Rating: 7.5/10

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