IS THERE LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL? Keren Yedaya’s Or (Mon Tresor)

Keren Yedaya’s film, recipient of the Golden Camera Prize and the Critics’ Week Grand Prize at the 2004 Cannes Festival, is an Israeli-French coproduction, and has two alternative titles. In Israel, where the film was made, it is called Or; in France, and several other countries, it was distributed as Mon Tresor. We will use the Israeli title, not only because we are Israeli, but because of its deeper significance. ‘Or’ is the name of the film’s protagonist; it is a common Israeli name (which can refer, by the way, to both women and men), and also a Hebrew word meaning ‘light’. By choosing the French title Mon Tresor, rhyming with Or, the makers of the film found a creative way of distancing their title from the French meaning of ‘Or’, namely gold; they also refer – with delicate irony, as we will spell out later on – to the place of Or in her mother’s life. Still, calling the film Or is more consonant with its emphasis on the daughter’s own experience, which is radically different from her mother’s view of her. Moreover, this title has an even broader meaning, related to one of the film’s central questions: is there light at the end of this tunnel? Or perhaps, as a jocular Hebrew version bitterly adds, the light comes from a train rushing towards us.