It is heartwarming and often funny, but in its lightness somehow misses the mark.
Comment
05/24/02
Yana's Friends
100
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:30
Fresh:30
Rotten:0
Average Rating:7.2/10
Consensus: A heartwarming movie that handles some weighty subjects with humor.
Runtime: 90 mins
Genre: Foreign Films
Synopsis: The Gulf War provides the background for an unlikely romance in this 1999 Israeli film that won 10 national awards. Yana (Evelyne Kaplun), pregnant and in debt, is being left by her husband. When... [More]
Reviews for Yana's Friends
The film eloquently persuades us that it is better to laugh than cry and better to make love than war, messages that never go out of date.
04/18/02
Sweet, sexy, and unexpectedly enchanting, "Yana's Friends" is the little feel-good comedy that could.
03/22/02
The treatment, both as satire and sentimentality, is heavy-handed.
03/19/02
Amusing with one unforgettable gag, Kaplun's film does a passable job of portraying the hardships endured by immigrants but is more notable for placing a light-hearted tale in a decidedly heavy time and place.
12/23/01
You aren't separated from these people even if they do live thousands of miles away.
11/16/01
I never imagined that Yana's Friends would one day turn out to be so timely for all New Yorkers -- and indeed, all Americans.
10/18/01
An appealing Israeli film about the resiliency needed by a small band of Russian immigrants to survive in difficult times.
10/13/01
One of the best date movies to come out in months.
10/12/01
Slight though it may be, Yana's Friends is life-affirming and filled with comic spirit that erupts even at the worst of times.
10/12/01
Top CriticKaplun's smart, scrappy romantic comedy Yana's Friends displays an insouciance rarely found in Israeli film.
10/09/01
[Yana's] understated optimism and enjoyment of life gives the film much of its vitality.
10/08/01
Kaplun (director Arik's wife) as Yana has a knack for maintaining her dignity and her poise while struggling through her humiliating problems.
10/08/01
A film whose warm-heartedness overcomes a lack of style.
09/26/01
A warm humanity washes over this lovely film, whose message is that gestures of love, however small or awkward, are crucial to the complicated art of survival.
09/26/01
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