In 'Golden Voices,' Russian movie dubbers reinvent themselves in Israel, to hilarious effect

• Published date: 09 October 2021
• Author: ANDREW LAPIN/JTA
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

The year is 1990, and married middle-aged couple Raya and Victor are new immigrants from the Soviet Union, which has just collapsed. With Israel suddenly playing host to an influx of new Russian-speaking migrants, Raya and Victor are our eyes and ears to this culture clash — and in a literal sense, our voices, too.

In the Soviet Union, the couple used their voices to make their living, dubbing classic movies into Russian to bring world cinema to their comrades. ("You turned Kirk Douglas into a great actor!" one of their fans gushes about their dubbing of "Spartacus.") But in Israel, deprived of a use for their skills and forced to learn a new language, their finely cultivated chops are suddenly proven useless and the two become economically stranded, just like every other Russian migrant around them.

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What do you do when your voice once brought pleasure to an entire nation, but now you can only speak to a small, marginalized sliver of your neighbors? Each protagonist finds a different approach to the question. Raya (Maria Belkin) finds work as a phone-sex operator catering to all of these new lonely Russian men; the scenes of her in the call center, using her theatrical background to assume the personas of whatever her clients desire, are a naughty delight.

Meanwhile, Victor (Vladimir Friedman) has a harder time letting go of his past — particularly once he stumbles upon a VHS rental store for Russian migrants that deals in pirated, crudely dubbed copies of the latest releases. Is he doomed to live in a celluloid past, like a Norma Desmond of the Negev?

"Golden Voices," which is seeing a U.S. release two years after an award-winning Israeli run, is a unique immigrant story that taps into a rich vein of dramatic potential. Its director and co-writer, Evgeny Ruman, was himself born in the former Soviet Union and immigrated to Israel with his family in 1990; Ruman dedicates the film to his parents, clear inspirations for Raya and Victor. Both Belkin and Friedman are post-Soviet emigres in real life.

Both actors turn in performances that offer fully lived-in encapsulations of the late-in-life immigrant experience — which is good, because a film about actors lives and dies on the strengths of the actual actors playing them. Belkin's gradual euphoria upon finding she enjoys her new erotic ventures is as touching as it is...