It takes some time to get used to the way Ami Ankilewitz looks. Diagnosed with muscular dystrophy when he was one-year-old, Ankilewitz has survived well into his thirties, but without moving his muscles much. His limbs and torso have atrophied to the point where he looks like a human stick figure, with a narrow head that his pencil neck can barely support. Ankilewitz lives in Israel with his family, and uses the one finger he can control to construct computer animations featuring a skinny, romantic little bird. And because he weighs only 39 pounds, his appearance remains shocking even after spending over an hour with him in Dani Menkin's documentary 39 Pounds Of Love. He doesn't look real. He's like a human cartoon.
39 Pounds Of Love is anchored by an impossible road trip that Ankilewitz takes from Tel Aviv to his Texas birthplace, where he plans to confront the doctor who told his mother he wouldn't live past the age of six. The situation seems contrived—not to mention dangerous—but there's an over-determined quality to most of 39 Pounds Of Love. Menkin frequently cuts to shots of people on the street reacting to Ankilewitz's appearance with shocked stares, but the movie doesn't allow for the possibility that the presence of a camera crew might be drawing some of the attention. Menkin also delves uncomfortably into Ankilewitz's feelings for his Romanian caretaker Christina, in scenes that have such a sense of sad inevitability that the viewer may question why they were shot in the first place. Either Menkin is exploiting his subject's condition for pathos, or something phony's going on.
The contrivances continue to mount. Ankilewitz pays a suspiciously staged-looking surprise visit to his estranged brother. He talks about wanting to ride a Harley-Davidson, in a blatant bit of foreshadowing. And then he finally meets his doctor, who's made out to be kind of a bad guybecause an apparently reasonable diagnosis turned out to be off the mark. Ankilewitz explains that his trip was intended to give the terminally ill hope, which is fine as an inspirational goal. But as documentary drama, 39 Pounds Of Love is as ungainly, blunt, and icky as its title.