It takes two to tango, the saying goes. But you can foxtrot on your own.
The steps take you forward, sideways, back, seemingly moving while standing still, or at least returning to the same spot.

This is the grand metaphor of FOXTROT, the astonishing, affecting, agonizingly brilliant film that ranks as one of this year’s best.

FOXTROT begins with every parents’ nightmare- the knock on the door by authorities advising of a child’s death.
Michael and Dafna, middle class Israelis, are devastated when Army officials arrive to announce the death while on duty of their son, Jonathan.

Dafna is sedated, Michael rages against the dying of his light, the hyperbole of military bureaucracy, and the hollowness of his loss.

The grief and stress of the situation is palpable, the anguish inextinguishable, thanks to a heartbreaking performance by Lior Ashkenazi as the distraught dad, Michael.

FOXTROT then takes us to the slain son’s outpost, a forlorn, forsaken border with a boom gate, a road seemingly traversed solely by a single camel. The troops assigned this outpost are bored, their active duty as barren as the landscape.

In this desolate bit of desert, Jonathan draws intricate cartoon narratives and dances with his rifle.
Writer director, Samuel Maoz, deftly builds his metaphors about the banality and boredom, the futility and fatalism of the Israeli – Palestinian situation. Then, shockingly, explodes the metaphorical with the shrapnel of harsh reality.

FOXTROT is a magnificently layered story story about two generations of Israelis – the second generation of the Holocaust survivors and the third generation – and the endless traumatic situation of the state, aspects forced upon it and part of it that could have been avoided.

FOXTROT is a drama about a family that breaks apart and reunites, a conflict between love and guilt; love that copes with extreme emotional pain.

In the third part of the triptych, Dafna, the mourning mother, released from her sedation, makes her presence felt. It is a sublime performance from Sarah Adler.

FOXTROT will step on the toes of some, but most will embrace this critical, compassionate and compelling film. And no one will forget it in a hurry.