Lost and found
By Daily Bruin Staff
Oct. 19, 2000 9:00 p.m.
 Illustration by RACHEL REILICH
By Jonathan Jones
Daily Bruin Contributor
When you first encounter 20-year-old Chaja Silberschmidt, you
delight in her bravado as she quits her job in a restaurant even as
you might rue her youthful impetuousness. But “Left
Luggage” quickly dispenses with that edginess in favor of a
much schmalzier tone.
Actor-turned-director Jeroen Krabbé’s solemn film
about Jewish identity in 1970s Belgium achieves a great deal of
integrity with its actors’ fine performances but ultimately
undoes it with an overdose of sentimentality.
The film begins confidently enough, introducing Chaja (Laura
Fraser), who barely pauses in her hedonistic lifestyle to visit her
jewish parents, who are still wrestling with, though in different
ways, their psychic scars from the Holocaust.
Rebuking religion herself, even skittishly remarking that she
hates Jews, Chaja’s life involves quitting a thankless job as
a waitress, attending the occasional university class, tossing out
her malingering Marxist boyfriend, and almost being evicted from
her grungy apartment.
What becomes the catalyst for her spiritual awakening, though,
is the job as a nanny she takes for the Kalmans, a Hasidic family
that strictly adheres to Jewish law. At first the culture shock
seems too much: she is chastised for wearing trousers, which is
forbidden to Hasidic women; for offering her hand in a gesture of
greeting to the family’s austere patriarch (Krabbé
himself); and for unwittingly entering his private sanctum.
Moreover, Chaja’s nanny duties are daunting. But as she
communes with the devoted but overworked Mrs. Kalman (Isabella
Rossellini), Chaja begins to apprehend the inferior status of women
in Hasidic society.
Chaja perseveres, however, mostly because of the adorableness of
the family’s young son, Simcha (Adam Monty), who
doesn’t speak at all and occasionally wets his pants,
ostensibly out of fear of his strict and forbidding father. That
her spunk is all it takes to eventually coax him to speak is one of
the most predictable things about the film.
Unfortunately the film propounds this cliché by inundating
the audience with scenes of cloying sweetness between Simcha and
Chaja as they take regular outings to the neighborhood pond to view
the ducks.
Chaja develops an attachment to the Kalmans and begins to
appreciate some of their ways, though, she must confront her
parents’ soul searching, too. Her father (Maximillian Schell)
obsesses over some suitcases containing family memorabilia, which
he buried somewhere in the city after arriving from a concentration
camp.
On certain days he embarks with a map and a shovel on a search
for the right place to dig, confounded by the changed urban
landmarks. Chaja’s mother (Marianne Sägebrecht), on the
other hand, fills the void left by denial by baking cakes, weaving
quilts, and doting on Chaja when she visits.
Ultimately it’s an unexpected tragedy that threatens and
then reinforces the bond Chaja has developed with the Kalmans and
even helps her relate to her parents.
The film’s performances are its most resounding feature.
Rossellini gives some of her best work as the dutiful Hasidic wife,
teetering between fear and devotion to the values she holds so
dear. Fraser’s work is practically as brilliant, her brown
eyes deep, expressive pools of vulnerability. In fact, it’s
she who lends the film perhaps its greatest credibility in the
subtle way her character sheds her insolence during the film.
It’s the supporting roles that are disappointing. The
actors do what they can, but the roles are so cardboard, so
one-dimensional that their presence elicits mainly boredom.
Chaja’s parents bicker, but the clichés they spew just
make you shake your heads as if to say, “I’ve heard all
this before.”
Moreover, the resentful concierge in the Kalmans’
building, who intimidates and harasses them, comes off as such a
cartoonish figure that he practically undermines the whole earnest
tone of the film.
“Left Luggage” is a film that yearns to be solemn
and profound, and to its credit, achieves that in its austere
production design and cinematography. Its script is simply
misguided dramatically to merit it.
Finally, although you can appreciate what Chaja has learned from
her encounter with the Kalmans, you somehow still yearn for some
expression of that spunk she had in the beginning.
FILM: “Left Luggage” opens today at select
theaters.