**Photosensitivity Warning: A club sequence includes a prolonged sequence of flashing lights that may prove triggering for sensitive viewers.**

Shared joy is double joy; Shared sorrow is half a sorrow.

– Swedish proverb

Just about everywhere one looks, there’s a reason to be filled with dread. The destruction of Palestine, violence in the Congo, and ethnic conflict in Manipur, India, among many others, not to mention the on-going mass disabling event that is the continued COVID-19 pandemic — there’s a persistent sense that sources for grief are everywhere. When folks find their commonality, the despair lessens; when there’s a heavy lack of humanity for one another, the despair deepens. This is true in circumstances of profound tragedy or communal success and in instances of personal loss or collective gain. The human experience is both complex and singular, while being entirely universal. Exploring these concepts is writer/director Tom Nesher (And Now Shut Your Eyes) in her feature-length debut Come Closer, a semi-autobiographical dramedy having its world premiere at Tribeca Film Festival 2024. Loss, love, grief, and repair come together in a tale defying easy description as it challenges itself and its audience within a narrative whose catharsis impacts more than just Nesher.

Lia Elalouf as Eden in COME CLOSER. Photo courtesy of Falco Ink.

Lia Elalouf as Eden in COME CLOSER. Photo courtesy of Falco Ink.

The premise of Come Closer is based on Nesher whose sibling passed away five years ago and to whom the film is dedicated. Inferring from what we come to learn about the ages of Eden and Natti, the characters may be aged right around when Nesher and her brother were when he passed away. Knowing this information only adds to the sorrow that permeates the film, but it does not restrict it in anyway. One might presume that Come Closer would be a morose ordeal, leveling one trauma after another on the audience as Eden comes to terms with truths that she’s put off facing, except Nesher manages to deliver a drama that understands the complexity of life, which brings with it a certain natural comedy. Discovery of truths is always hard, but the presentation of them doesn’t have to be, especially when presenting Eden in her initial form, which is someone whose external party/fun persona belies a more wounded soul underneath. This enables Elalouf the space to give Eden a somewhat aggressive personality that makes Eden intimidating at first, only to be revealed as the person who’ll pull you out of your shell as you get to know her. This presentation of Eden creates the space to inject silliness and humor in a tale whose foundation is separation and dissolution.

Lia Elalouf as Eden in COME CLOSER. Photo courtesy of Falco Ink.

As a result, much of the weight of Come Closer falls on Elalouf (Alumim), which she handles with incredible grace and vulnerability. As written by Nesher, the audience isn’t spoon fed through exposition who Eden is; making her a secret that needs to be explored for us as much as the existence of Maya and her relationship to Natti is for Eden. Rather, the focus is on Eden’s actions, making everything that Elalouf does, from the physical to line-delivery, important to granting the audience a full picture of who she is. Based on her introduction, it would be easy to see her as a mere party girl with parental issues, but through the slow execution of the narrative and Elalouf’s performance, we come to understand that Eden is not only complex, but her internal view is misguided thanks to a reluctance to grow beyond her relationship with Natti. Put another way, the character had grown so attached to her brother amid the divorce of their parents, that the unexpected loss forced her to confront a life without a safety net, and that’s horrifying to many. As a counter-balance, Rosenn (Cramel) is superb, creating a character out of Maya whose secret seems complex, but we come to realize lacks the drama of a fictional tale and all the mystery of a regular teen romance. Rosenn brings a certain innocence to Maya that makes it believable that no one within Eden’s circle, outside of Natti, knew of her existence; her performance conveying the kind of naivete the tumultuous nature of Natti’s home might ruin had they not kept their relationship secret. Don’t mistake this to mean that Maya is innocent; she’s just young, and there’s often a big difference between the two. By contrast, Eden lives on her own, works at a bar, and engages in behavior that is essentially self-harm no matter how you view it, thereby creating the sense that while Eden may be experienced, she is by no means emotionally wise.

L-R: Darya Rosenn as Maya and Lia Elalouf as Eden in COME CLOSER. Photo courtesy of Falco Ink.

This brings us to a core element of Come Closer that can easily be missed among the trauma of loss and the intimacy that forms between Eden and Maya as they discover life post-Natti: deconstruction doesn’t mean permanent loss. On a thematic level, Come Closer is a story of that period between childhood and adulthood wherein your parents still look at you as if you require coddling and you feel like you can do anything, consequences be damned. The death of Natti is unquestionably tragic, something which Nesher leaves room for blame to be cast about, and it’s an aspect that leads to one of the more powerful and painful moments in the entire film once the unspoken is released; however, it’s a necessary one as Nesher breaches the threshold of that in between space of personal growth in order to grant Eden the kick she so desperately requires. Youth is wonderful and adulthood is hard, yet being uncompromising with yourself and others only leads to greater pain. But pain itself isn’t necessarily a bad thing on the whole as, ideally, it leads to growth out of the discomfort. Some of this is explored via the Eden/Maya relationship and the complexity surrounding it, circumstances and all, though audience expectations may get in the way of really understanding the fundamental root of their connection and what Eden seeks: shared grief that lessens the discomfort. To that end, if Come Closer makes you uncomfortable, sit with why before speaking on it. Given yourself the space to consider, to ruminate, before making a judgement, as grey exists all around us as it does for these characters.

Writer/director Tom Nesher. Photo courtesy of Falco Ink.

Nesher’s Come Closer is a beautiful composition, a tale of a sibling’s bond and the ways in which we often take for granted those who are in our lives. The film is unafraid to look at the difficult places of regular life, whether it’s parents who use their kids rather than guide them, sex as a salve, or grief as a sour seed from which to grow a lasting relationship. Along the way, it doesn’t judge its central character, neither praising nor looking down upon successes and failures, but recognizing that, in life, the only thing that’s true is how burdens are eased and joys only increased with support. Come Closer beckons audiences to lean in and not look away.

Screening during Tribeca Film Festival 2024.
In theaters December 5th, 2025.

For more information, head to the official Tribeca 2024 Come Closer webpage.

Final Score: 4 out of 5.

Categories: In Theaters, Reviews

Tags: 2-Team Productions, adaptation, biography, Come Closer, Darya Rosenn, drama, Falco Ink, film festival, foreign film, Greenwich Entertainment, Hebrew, Ido Tako, Israel, Italy, Jacob Zada Daniel, LGBTQIA+, Lia Elalouf, Likely Story, Netta Garti, Ofek Pesach, Shlomi Shaban, Tom Nesher, Tribeca Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival 2024, Yael Shoshana Cohen