Paper DollsPaper thin  September 6,
2006 11:53:07 AM
Tomer Heymann documents the lives of five Filipino transsexuals who moved to Israel after 2000 when the country closed its borders to Palestinian workers and invited foreigners to make up the resulting labor shortage. By day the fivesome work as caregivers in conservative suburbs of Tel Aviv; on their nights off they perform their drag-queen act as the Paper Dolls. Jan, Chiqui, Cheska, Giorgio, and Sally are engaging as they take advantage of Israel’s comparative cultural freedom, but Heymann fails to excavate below the surface of their day-to-day existence, to probe their outsider status, which is aggravated in the last 20 minutes of the film when Israel’s relationship with the Palestinians improves and it tries to expel the foreign workers. He had a rich subject to mine, but he doesn’t cash in, and the result is hollow and unemotional.
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