Six Acts (2013) - Jonathan Gurfinkel

Gili, a naive teenage girl, has just started at a new high school in Tel Aviv.  Determined to not be another outcast, Gili begins partcipating in sexual favors for some of the most popular guys at school, Omri and Tomer.  Gili views her relationship with Omni as mutually beneficial for both parties, a sorta friends with benefits, but as more time passes it becomes clear that there is no semblance of a friendship to speak of.   Jonathan Gurfinkel's Six Acts is a raw and provocative look into sexual abuse, painting a vivid portrait of a young woman's desperate need to fit in.  For the most part subtle, Six Acts captures the youth male cutlure that puts sex on a high pedestal, with porn and media influence only aiding in making woman an object to the male gaze, nothing more.  Gili is a young woman who is desperate to fit in, and Six Acts beautifuly and subtle establishes a woman who desperately is seeking some form of affection, unable to decipher the difference between sex and geniune caring.  Establishing how Gili is a character more susceptiable to this form of naivity is critical, with Six Acts subtlely showing how Gili is part of a broken home, being a single child who has literally no contact with her father at all.   Six Acts shows how young impressionable woman become the perfect target, as Gigli essentially becomes a sexual object to Omni and his group of friends, who casually pass her around to one and other.  While Omni sexually abuses her he routinely and quite mechanically offers empty words of affection to Gigli, calling her special, beautiful, and amazing, reinforcing Gigli's need to feel accepted and appreciated in the most horrible way possible.  While the film's study of objectification is important, Six Acts oversteps its bounds a bit in the end, with a final sequence involving Omni's father that feels a little too forced, as if Gurfinkel wants to make sure the viewer understands this isn't just a problem amoung kids. Jonathan Gurfinkel's Six Acts shows how in society sometimes the only way a woman can find acceptance in through sexuality, a startling and deeply troubling problem.

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