Oz Shtamler | Auto da fé / 2022

forgetting what you want

by Douglas Messerli

 

Oz Shtamler (screenwriter and director) Auto da fé / 2022 [20 minutes]

 

The pun of the ritual penance carried out against condemned heretics, Oz Shtamler’s 2022 short film, Auto da fé deals with another kind of penance played out by an Israelic mechanic, Amnon (Noam Boukobza) who suddenly meets up with porn star Danny Jokcs’ (Rafi Kalmar) car. Amnon is immediately entranced by the porn figure whom he evidently recognizes, and the somewhat fey individual now becomes central in his life, suggests they might meet up in two days.

    His boss, dealing with his own memories of a female affair long again in Portugal, is not at all sympathetic with Amnon’s constant attention to Jokcs’ car, which evidently even appears in his porno films, and to which Amnon makes sex one late evening after watching a performance of the star’s primary porno on-line.

     His boss, obsessed with his own memories, attempts to convince his worker that the car is not worth the wealthy porn star’s attention. As he states, “If you have enough money, you can forget what you want.”

     But Amnon, by this time is so thoroughly involved with the mythos of his porn star figure and his car that there is no turning back, as he finally brings the auto back to life. Moreover, in a late-night fantasy or reality—we have no ability to determine which it is—Jokcs, (or is it someone else who Amnon has met?) joins him in the auto for an incredible fuck. Whether it’s the porn figure, another friend, or an imaginative fantasy, it doesn’t truly matter. Amnon has experienced complete satisfaction and he has totally accepted his gay existence which he has needed to hide in the redneck garage world in which he lives.

     Alas, and more than slightly terrifying, the wealthy porn star never returns for the car, and despite its beauty and, despite Amnon’s detailed attention to its refurbishment, it is sent away to be crushed as a piece of rejected rubbish—of course, in that act, representing as well the society’s constriction and total destruction of Amnon’s experiences or even his sexual possibilities.

     Without any intention of ill-well or an obvious homophobic reaction, Amnon’s boss and friends have more than tortured the young mechanic; they have crushed the very life out of him—or at least the car which symbolized his sexual fantasies.

      I have long recommended Israeli films as being some of the most powerful and innovative of current LGBTQ+ movies. This is another example of the powerful approach they take to the issues which are difficult without their religious-centered society.

 

Los Angeles, January 27, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (January 2024).