At the beginning of THE FAREWELL PARTY, Ezekiel, a resident of a Jerusalem retirement village, rings another resident on the phone from reception, claiming to be God, and telling her to keep up with her cancer therapy, not to worry, there are no vacancies in Heaven at the moment, but she is assured a reservation when the time is right.
This light hearted “playing God” takes on a weightier aspect soon after when the wife of a terminally ill friend in the same retirement facility asks Ezekiel to build a euthanasia machine. The patient is clearly in agony, medicine and machines merely prolonging his suffering, undignifying his life to mere existence as an excreting organism.
With the aid of a vet who has recently taken up residence in the retirement home to be near his clandestinely homosexual lover, Ezekiel constructs the machine as an act of love and humanity.
When rumours of the machine begin to spread, more and more people ask for their help.
This does not sit well with Ezikiel’s wife, Levana, who is suffering from dementia, sliding in and out of lucidity, and perhaps apprehensive about her own future.
With the First World population living longer lives than ever before, THE FAREWELL PARTY is a timely and poignant tale of the right to live and the right to die in dignity.
Written and directed by Tal Granit and Sharon Maymon and based on a novel by Katharina Hagena, THE FAREWELL PARTY is a tender and charming comedy that explores ethics, emotions, empathies and enmities that accompany the question of quality of life and dignity of death.
Ze’ev Revach is gorgeous as Ezikiel, embodying the caring, compassionate quality of a man devoted to his family and both devastated and frustrated at his beloved wife’s vanishing mental faculties.
Levana Finkelstein as Levana is lovely as the confused, yet cognizant of her own impending catastrophe, dementia sufferer.
The rest of the “party” is made up of a superb string of septuagenarians whose pace and timing of such juicy lines as “hurry up with euthanasia machine, he could be dead waiting.” are delicious in their irony.
THE FAREWELL PARTY is one of the gems of the Jewish International Film Festival, should not be missed, and deserves a wider, general cinema release.
The Jewish International Film Festival offers features, shorts, documentary and television series, including 43 major international award winners, runs from Wednesday October 29 to Saturday November 16 at Event Cinemas, Bondi Junction.
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For more about the farewell party, visit http://www.jiff.com.au