5 Hours From Paris works because it doesn’t take sides. It doesn’t tell you how to feel or whose side you should be on. It doesn’t make the lives of its characters out to be more or less significant than they plainly appear on the screen. It’s flattering when watching a film -- especially one branded as a romantic-comedy -- to not have the director (Leon Prudovsky) take your hand and guide you through the narrative as though you’re incapable of summoning any emotion without instruction. Whether the protagonists end up together doesn’t really seem to matter. For once there’s more to take away from a rom-com than the fleeting feeling of satisfaction upon seeing the grand embrace in the end.
The film is about "taking off" -- the act of leaving one’s comfort zone -- but it challenges in never letting it known whether it believes this is a good thing or bad thing. Or even a thing at all. The characters are in equal measures charming quirkiness and frustrating stagnation. Yigal (Dror Keren) is a lowly taxi driver in the working-class suburb of Tel Aviv, who longs to overcome his fear of flying so that he can accompany his son to Paris for his bar mitzvah. Lina (Elena Yaralova) is Yigal’s son’s music teacher. Her husband is in Canada, working to cement their visas so that they can leave Israel. Yes, Yigal and Lina fall in love, but don’t let that discourage you from seeing 5 Hours From Paris, for the film is more about the impact their meeting has on their own comfort zones than a document of their lovey-dovey time together. In fact, even Paris’ role as that ultimate quarry is easily dismissed. There are no grand gestures, no sweeping sentiment. In short, this isn’t Hollywood’s idea of romance.
That is not to say the film’s conclusion is missable. It just shouldn’t have to justify your seeing the film. The gradual changes that occur in both Yigal and Lina are reason enough to see 5 Hours From Paris -- not for their monumental metamorphoses that you expect in the film’s final third but for their subtle acknowledgement that change is in fact possible.
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