Je t'aime Ronit Elkabetz

Je t’aime Ronit Elkabetz was the name of a 2017 exhibition presenting Elkabetz’s usually self-created clothes at the Design Museum Holon – an event around which Moran Ifergan’s eponymous portrait of the late actor circles. It is therefore only becoming to open the film with a quote from Honoré de Balzac’s Treatise on Elegant Living: “Whether it is worn on the foot, whether on the chest or on the head, at times it is the shoe marking a privilege, other times it is the cap, the turban or the hat indicating a revolution.”

Clothes make the person, and doubly so, the actor. Was she ever anything else? One of the interviewees here observes that an important part of her natural survival had to do with appearance. Elkabetz had a marked preference for black, sometimes in layers of shades, textures and densities, although she also knew how to wear the more flamboyant hues of yellow. This idea of dressing up for life finds its parallels in her film appearances and its correspondences in her sense of direction, as Ifergan evocatively shows. After the screening at IFFR 2022 of Shlomi Elkabetz’s cenotaph to his sister/collaborator’s memory, Cahiers noirs (2021), Ifergan’s elegant essay now offers an outside look at Ronit Elkabetz’s legacy.

– Olaf Möller