Review by Simi Horwitz, Forward
Early in Nir Bergman’s Pink Lady, Bati (Nur Fibak), a married Haredi woman and the mother of three children, is riding a city bus when she becomes aware of a dark-skinned man, perhaps an Arab, eyeing her. She is at once attracted, intrigued, and profoundly uncomfortable. She quickly turns away.

A deceptively simple film that explores sexuality and desire within an insular and restrictive Haredi community, Pink Lady marks an impressive debut for screenwriter Mindi Ehrlich, an insider who married at 17, became a mother shortly thereafter, and ultimately departed.

Though this Israeli film offers a harsh critique of its world, it is never strident or even obvious. It’s an understated slice-of-life family drama that encompasses elements of mystery, thriller and, at moments, sex comedy that are simultaneously funny and unsettling, though often far more the latter.

Bati has opened a letter addressed to her husband, Lazer (Uri Blufarb), demanding blackmail money. The note is accompanied by compromising photos featuring Lazer and his male study partner cuddling and kissing. Lazer insists the pictures are Photoshopped. She tries but ultimately fails to accept the lie.

Lazer has never come out to her and she feels deeply betrayed, questioning her own judgments, and their whole shared history; far worse, though, is the fact that he is gay, a major sin in God’s eyes that needs, in the view of their community, to be punished, corrected, and eradicated.

Suddenly, their safe, secure universe has been upended. There’s the blackmailers’ endless financial drain on their limited resources, the devastating fear of public exposure, and the question of how Bati and Lazer should navigate their own relationship as they attempt to move forward in a space where every activity — from the mundane to the most holy — is prescribed.

Two thematic threads, the pragmatic and theological, are overtly, but more usually subtextually, present throughout. First, maintaining marriage and family is sacrosanct.

The theological aspect, the second thread, is more complex, raising questions about God’s plans. If we are all God’s creation, Lazer wonders, doesn’t that include homosexual people?

Still, every attempt is made to change him, including the use of brutal conversion therapy that predictably alters nothing. If anything, he is more drawn to men than ever.

Pink Lady is most centrally about Bati’s sexual awakening. It’s largely told from her perspective, paradoxically set in an intensely sexual world. Perhaps that’s precisely because the forbidden is ubiquitous.

In the wake of Lazer’s revelation, Bati becomes increasingly aware that her husband has never approached her with enthusiasm, not that she really knows what desire looks or even feels like. Still, she can’t help but compare her situation to that of her sister who says that her husband is so sexually eager he waits for her outside the mikvah (ritual bath).

Bati asks Lazer, “Are you attracted to me?” To which he says, “I’m attracted to your soul.” He adds that the rabbi assured him his true sexual impulses would pass once he was married.

Bati also consults their rabbi, who urges her to pray at the Western Wall for 40 days. She complies even as she notices that not all women, including those in her own community, are as chaste or unschooled as she is.

At the mikvah, where she hands out towels and helps women prepare themselves for immersion, she encounters an unfettered Natalie (Gal Malka), sporting long, unkempt hair, tight-fitting jeans, and nail polish.

Devoid of inhibition, Natalie takes a selfie as she waits her turn. Bati warns her that her nail polish will only serve as a “buffer” to immersion and in the event she’s pregnant, she will give birth to an “impure” child.

Amused and derisive, Natalie is an anomalous character, but revealing nonetheless. Her presence hints at cultural cracks beginning to surface. Bati’s distaste for her gives way to feelings of reluctant affection. A friendship grows. Natalie escorts Bati to department stores, where she encourages her to try on a range of immodest outfits.

And later, when Bati discovers a stack of heterosexual pornographic magazines that one assumes the rabbi has given Lazer in an effort to turn him on to women, Bati is fascinated by the explicit pictures, particularly one model’s wild, dyed-pink wig, and all that it evokes. She refers to the model as the pink lady (thus the film’s title), who becomes an emblem of everything Bati is not and perhaps yearns to be.

The film wonderfully brings to life a cross section of Haredi society, starting with its most dissonant violent outliers, a gang of three blackmailers clad in traditional garb who are determined to rid their community of homosexual people, who they say are “disgusting” to God.

And there are the warring mothers-in-law who begrudgingly join forces to keep their children’s marriage intact. Theirs is a subtle nod to both class differences and improbable sisterhood.

In scenes that boast a feminist streak while at the same time being profoundly anti-feminist, Natalie also serves as teacher, showing Bati how to do a lap dance while Bati clumsily impersonates her moves.

The underlying assumption here is that Bati is responsible for Lazer’s homosexuality and that she is in a position to cure it. Indeed, if she is a dutiful wife, she will do so.

Bergman summons forth a textured, contradictory, and at times visually striking world. The acting is superb throughout. Fibak creates a strong woman who evolves, matures, and changes. Blufarb is every bit a tormented trapped soul who desperately wants to be what he isn’t.

It would be glib and reductive to say he’s bisexual (though he probably is), and in lesser hands that’s what the film would assert.

What’s relevant here is that, in the end, though open to interpretation, this film is a powerful love story between Bati and Lazer. The film never loses its authenticity. What remains undisputed is freedom’s cost.

JCC Film Fest presents Pink Lady, 7:30 p.m., Thursday, June 11 at The Neon, 130 E. Fifth St., Dayton. $12. Purchase tickets here.

To read the complete June 2026 Dayton Jewish Observer, click here.