Fateema Al-Hamaydeh Miller | Eitr / 2023

love at first smell

by Douglas Messerli

 

Fateema Al-Hamaydeh Miller (screenwriter and director) Eitr / 2023 [14 minutes]

 

Toronto-based director Fateema Al-Hamaydeh Miller’s short film of 2023, Eitr—which in Arabic means perfume or the essence of someone—introduces us to a young Arab man, Mohamed (Mostafa Shaker) who has been forced to take over his father’s perfume shop after his death. His life is filled with ads with handsome men advertising for male perfumes—all frustrating for the perfume seller since Mohamed is a closeted gay man, attracted to nearly anyone who might enter his shop door, including the UPS boy (Augusto Bitter).

        In fact, hardly anyone does enter, Mohamed spending most of his time in the back room trying to masturbate to some of the TV or magazine ads when he isn’t being regularly interrupted by his mother, Marwa (Hamsa Diab Farhat) who, in her behavior, seems almost replaceable by the better known stereotype of a Jewish mother, who calls to make sure he doing well, eating properly, praying, and preparing for the evening visit she has scheduled with a beautiful woman she’s picked out for him to fall in love with and marry.

 

     She ends his attempt at masturbation, and when a customer, Lloyd (Guled Abdi) finally does enter the store seeking an appropriate perfume for his dead father and finally finds it by intensely taking in the Polo-sport cologne odor of Mohamed’s neck, Marwa almost ruins his first possible sexual encounter by checking-in once again on him, this time by showing up to the shop.

      Forced to deal with her, the son takes her outside, assures her of his eating habits, reports on sales, and promises to show up for the date that night before he can return to the man who has shown at least some interest in his “personal essence.”

       The two sneak into the back room to smoke some Turkish hashish and, soon finding themselves a bit intoxicated, turn to one another ready to fulfill their urges. Another phone call squashes his hopes, as he finally sacks up the perfume Lloyd has chosen and wishes him well. The subtitles proclaim “The End.”

       But Mohamed quickly takes another bag and runs off to follow his customer to his car, insisting it’s a two-for-one sale, promising apparently far more of his essence to the stranger, who receives it with the intended implications of the gesture.

       Al-Hamaydeh Miller, one side of her family which is Palestinian, has created a funny short film about a community often missing from the LGBTQ festivals. The only problem I had was in believing that Mohamed, even given his desperation, would be a good sexual partner for the very tall and imposing Lloyd. I’d rather have seen him go off with the lean and cute UPS guy. As it is, it appears that his decision for a gay companion is as limited and as predetermined, given his isolation and desperation, as the choices of women made for him by his mother. Maybe just a few more customers or a few more incidents outside the store might have made his choice more believable. As it is, it appears he took the first guy who came along who liked the smell of him. That’s not usually the way most gay men I know meet.

      But now surely we need a sequel to reveal just how Mohamed is going to explain Lloyd to his mother.

 

Los Angeles, July 23, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (July 2023).