The Collector (2009)

Having already seen and loved Haim Tabakman’ Eyes Wide Open, I watched Pink Lady, expecting it to address the problem of homophobia within the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in the same way, by gently showing that the love between two men can be as beautiful and as powerful as the love between a man and a woman. But Pink Lady turned out to be different. Most movies give you their point upfront, while others make you think it’s about a specific topic, then reveal that the story is about something else. Pink Lady belongs somewhere in the middle of those two categories.

Written by Mindi Ehrlich, who has lived in and left that environment, and directed by Nir Bergman, Pink Lady follows a devout ultra-Orthodox woman called Bati (Nur Fibak), whose life takes a turn for the worse when she discovers that her husband, Lazer (Uri Blufarb), is being blackmailed and tormented by their religious community because he’s a closeted gay man. Desperate to save their marriage and fix him, she resorts to all sorts of available methods to make him desire her. But the more the plot unfolds, the more it becomes clear that this isn't a movie about a gay man trapped inside a deeply conservative religious community and a wife who’s been betrayed. It is also about a woman discovering that she has been trapped too.