‘The Other Widow’: A complex story of two women

Even in times of war, love and relationships are still an important part of our lives, and Maayan Rypp’s new film, The Other Widow, which opened in Israel on Thursday, spotlights a very personal story of two women.

The movie mixes serious drama with moments of black comedy as it tells the story of Ella (Dana Ivgy, one of the most celebrated actresses in Israel cinema), who works as a costume designer for a theater, and who has been in a long-running affair with a married playwright (Itamar Rotschild). 

When the film opens, the two are collaborating on a revised production of the classic ancient Greek tale of betrayal and jealousy, Medea. But early in the film, after Assaf dies suddenly, she has to cope with the fact that although he was a huge part of her life, she cannot mourn him publicly. She insists on attending the shiva mourning period at his home and develops a weird fascination with his coldly perfect widow, Natasha (Ania Bukstein), a classical musician.

Ella is under pressure to finish her work so that the show can go on, which everyone agrees Assaf would have wanted, but she finds herself falling apart. A key part of the plot is how she becomes obsessed with an elaborate costume she has designed, a black dress covered with tubes meant to collect the tragic heroine’s tears, but which keeps malfunctioning. The dress is a haunting image, symbolizing Ella’s connection to the deep sorrow she feels but is not allowed to express. 

It’s appropriate that the movie opened just in time for International Women’s Day, although of course Rypp never imagined it would be released during wartime. But she thinks that audiences will appreciate the film and may find it especially relevant now. 

“The movie doesn’t deal with politics. It talks about something very human. I hope it gives people something that is a kind of escapism, or light, something with a little humor, that lets people reconnect with their own lives,” said Rypp, who co-wrote the screenplay with Anat Gafni. 

While the film is not autobiographical, it was inspired by an experience the director had. “I had a forbidden love, I was 24 and I wrote a whole story about us and it was actually very boring. And then I decided to kill him off [in the story] and I realized that was more interesting. It became about, how does a mistress deal with her grief when her lover dies? And in the movie, he dies right in the beginning, he’s not present at all, and it became a story about two women.”

Audience response to the film

THE OTHER Widow has been shown at festivals around the world and has elicited very emotional responses from audiences. “A lot of women come to me saying it’s their story, or the story of someone they know. It’s interesting how it’s personal but also universal,” Rypp observed. 

“I had never imagined how many women like this there are walking among us... It’s about keeping a secret and then bringing it out to the world,” she continued. “When I broke up with that guy, I had to keep it buried inside me, because no one ever knew we were together. It got complicated, and that place of not being able to speak about the feelings – that seemed to me very powerful.”

One interesting aspect of the movie is that Ella, the mistress, is an extremely open person, disorganized, messy, and emotional, while Natasha, the wife, is reserved, a woman who seems to always look great and say the right thing. Said Rypp: “Ella is not the stereotypical femme fatale. I tried to take the stereotype and break it down. A lot of women who get into Ella’s situation are not femme fatales, they just went too far with a relationship with a married man. Ella takes everything a little too far. She feels too much, she cries too much, it’s something I could identify with, while Natasha is always perfectly put together.

“The desire for these women to get closer to each other is what drives the plot. Neither can get away from the other. Ella knows who Natasha is, and Natasha suspects, but doesn’t exactly know who Ella is. You never know when the secret will come out.”

THE THEATRICAL setting gives the story a special intensity, and it’s a setting Rypp knows well because her father is a theater director. “There’s a feeling that theatrical company is disconnected from the rest of the world. There’s a sense of urgency, that we must get this play up and running, and Ella and Assaf live out a fantasy about what can happen between them there, isolated from the rest of their lives.”

Having a cast that was “the dream of any director” also helped bring the story to life. She tried to keep Ivgy and Bukstein apart as much as possible, keeping the rehearsals short and technical, “because when they spent time together, I thought they were too comfortable with each other. When they first meet, Dana’s character has to be afraid of Ania, so I wanted them to be able to say the text for the first time while we were shooting. I wanted their characters to be mysterious to each other.”

The striking, bizarre dress that Ella designs and constructs for Medea highlights her predicament. “The dress is a good example of the connection between fantasy and reality in the film. The tubes go up to her eyes and when she cries, the tears go down the tubes and fill with liquid.

“When I wrote it, I went wild with this idea. It really came from my gut, from wanting to show Ella’s emotions. I wasn’t thinking about how there would be a budget for it. I didn’t want to use special effects, everything that showed her feelings, I wanted it to be real. The more I worked on it, the more complicated I realized it was.”

Rypp goes on to explain how the dress used tubing from gardens and fountains and in the end, it worked. “There are magic moments in movie sets, and I was in awe, seeing how this concept made it off the page and into the movie.” 

When Ella wears the dress, “There’s something about it that kind of makes it into an action figure. She seems so strong and there’s a disconnect between the idea of what is a mistress, traditionally, how a mistress is hidden and in the shadows, and her power when she puts it on. A lot of her fantasies and reality blend in the film.” 

Rypp is currently writing the script for a new movie about a female weightlifter who discovers she is pregnant while training for the Olympics. “It was something I thought about after having my son,” who was born while she edited The Other Widow. Becoming a mother made her think about the contradictory demands of motherhood and professional life, and it sounds like she is well on her way to making another movie about a strong, complex woman.