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'Free Zone' ventures into difficult territory

Reports of the new Israeli film "Free Zone" have invariably focused on its opening shot, in which the camera sits silently for an extraordinarily long time, watching Natalie Portman cry in the back seat of a hired car.

New Yorker Films 'Free Zone' 3 out of 5 stars The verdict: A Mideast-set film that's rich in political meaning. Director: Amos Gitai Starring: Natalie Portman, Hanna Laszlo, Carmen Maura, Uri Klauzner, Makram Khouri Run time: 90 minutes Release date: April 7, 2006 Rating: Not rated. Rate 'Free Zone'   Go see it   Make it a matinee   Wait to rent   Don't bother Voter Limit: Once per Hour View Poll Results

Those pieces might give the false impression that the film is inordinately concerned with its American star, or even that what her character is mourning matters much. To the contrary, the scene functions like one of those tone-setting, music-only overtures found in old epics — planting international viewers firmly in a setting where personal heartbreak and age-old rifts between cultures bleed into each other, and where promises of happy resolution usually come to nothing.

Portman's Rebecca is an American in Israel who has somehow found herself dependent on the stranger — Hanna (Hana Laszlo), an Israeli — driving this car. We learn why after Rebecca persuades the older woman to let her tag along on a personal business trip into the "free zone" where residents of Israel, Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia meet peacefully to do business. In a long, hypnotic driving sequence, a series of always-shifting multiple exposures shows the view out the windshield while flashing back to Rebecca's recent breakup with her fiancé, a former soldier from Spain who has ugly secrets in his past.

The focus shifts, though, to another character with things to hide. Hanna is making this trip in her husband's place, to collect a $30,000 debt from a business partner known only as "the American." Complicating matters, in order to find the partner Hanna must deal with a Palestinian woman named Leila (Hiam Abbass).

These three characters present all sorts of allegorical opportunity for Amos Gitai, the film's acclaimed director and co-writer. Some critics have seen political allegory as all the film has to offer, but the three actresses here are strong enough personalities to make their loosely drawn characters more than metaphors. The film wanders like a shaggy-dog story from one plot of parched earth to another (and Gitai's most captivating filmmaking choices — the long takes, the dense but daydreamy flashbacks — depend on this aimless mood), but it has a core that's involving regardless of its political interest.

Two of the film's stars were in the recent "The Syrian Bride," and, like that film, this one ends with one character fleeing headlong across a border checkpoint while an irreconcilable argument hangs behind her. In both cases, the end is ambiguous and unsatisfying; in this case, though, the nature of the voyage doesn't demand a tidy resolution.