Madam Yankelova’s Fine Literature Club is a drama about a club for women where love is prohibited and a dark secret lingers over all.
With a title like Madam Yankelova’s Fine Literature Club, images of Lemony Snicket or just about anything from Tim Burton leap to mind, and well they should, even as the opening credits roll by. However, this is something a little different, darkly so, with a more aggressive tone even as it clings to comedy. An Israeli film spoken entirely in Hebrew, this is a fantasy with a weird twist seeped in all kinds of social commentary that leave it a curious watch to be sure, unsettling absolutely, and a little hard to wrap one’s head around.
Out on a lonely road leading away from a strip club, two women – the sophisticated by somewhat quiet Sophie (Keren Mor) and the outgoing Hannah (Hana Laslo) – wave down men saying they need a ride. One agrees after being told they will bring him to young attractive women. It’s a trap of course, their destination the large estate of the Fine Literature Club, where women gather with men they found who are compared for a specific physical trait and used for…well, that’s a secret. Thing is, Sophie is getting older and losing her ability to lure men, her chance to earn status as one of the club’s lordess’s fading away, possibly ending up in sanitation, where Hannah seems destined to stay herself. But she and Hannah have a plan.
A modest little film with a low budget, Madam Yankelova’s Fine Literature Club is a slow-paced thriller of sorts, though not always with the momentum one might expect. Director Guilhad Emilio Schenkerb makes his feature length debut and commits to the fairy tale feel with a Grimm’s edge, the story possibly rooted in Israeli folklore, the nondescript world giving off a sort of everywhere at anytime vibe, but it’s strangely weightless.
There’s a lot that’s meant to be tricky, the story playing with our mistrust of who is whom and what they are saying, with everyone feeling as though they have some larger part in outcome, including the arrival of Yosef (Yiftach Klein), a handsome man Sophie meets at the library, whom you’ve already guessed stirs the pot for her in possibly derailing her intended fate. But is he legit? There’s no denying a few moments of fun grow from this and the more the odd story plays out the deeper the hooks set in keeping one invested, but let’s be clear, this is weird stuff.
Not quite a true horror film and not quite a complete dark comedy, Madam Yankelova’s Fine Literature Club at least has a notable style and a strong cast in keeping this compelling. It’s not meant to make you jump or, in the other direction, inspire some laughs, only to generate some thought. For those who crave unpacking greater context from interpretation, this is more than fodder enough for such a thing, but for those looking for a traditional quirky good time at the movies, this might disappoint.