Shai Blanc | אין דלתות נעולות (No Locked Doors) / 2014

a film of gradual revelations

by Douglas Messerli

 

Shai Blanc (screenwriter and director) אין דלתות נעולות (No Locked Doors) / 2014 [12 minutes]

 

Israeli director Shai Blac’s No Locked Doors is a film of gradual revelations. It begins simply enough, with an older brother Lior (Aviad Shai) assigned to the task of looking after his younger brother, Ben (Ariel Shilo), who is sick at home. No explanation is given why the parents are not there to care for their youngest and his elder sibling; perhaps they are simply at work or away on a visit.

     It is apparent, however, that his parents’ absence is assured enough that Lior has invited—we later learn somewhat hesitantly—his gay lover, Nir (Joseph Alon), for a visit. Indeed, since Nir is currently serving his required military duty, the visit represents his last hours of freedom on a leave.

      Both older boys are excited about the possibility of enjoying their last sexual contact before at least a month or more of absence. But what to do about Ben, like most young boys a charmingly inquisitive kid, who obviously looks up to his brother and, despite his illness, wants his brother to play basketball and other games with him?

      Lior, we discover, is a good brother, willing to care for Ben and involved with teaching him things young boys need to learn in order to get on in the world, such as being able to balance a basketball on your head.

      Given the precious time Nir has left, he has no patience for his lover’s little brother. When the two first retreat to Lior’s bedroom, soon after Ben becomes bored, and wants to know what military maneuvers his brother’s friend is supposedly teaching him, opens the bedroom door (in a house where it has been determined that no one locks any door) and sees them in a very strange position, one straddling atop the other, fortunately not fully sexual yet and without them having yet entirely undressed.

      Curious about the military maneuver, and anxious to show his brother how he has almost learned how to balance the ball on his forehead, Ben refuses to budge until suddenly he remembers it’s time for his medicine. As Lior takes him into the living room, and soon after reaches into the cabinet for the bottle, Nir appears almost naked in the hall, suggesting that Lior needn’t worry: “You know how kids are with medicine.”

      It appears, we suddenly realize, that he is suggesting that perhaps Lior might just add a little more of the mild narcotic to his tablespoon in order to put Ben into a deeper sleep. But Lior, without saying anything, makes it clear that he will do not do any such thing, and puts the bottle back into the cabinet, telling his brother that he will prepare his medicine later. Fortunately, Ben falls to sleep of his own accord.

      The two older boys now decide to engage in sex in the bathroom, a place Ben won’t perhaps intrude and surely wouldn’t imagine as a location to which they had both retreated. This time they do undress and begin some serious military maneuvers.

       But Ben, awakening and retrieving his own medicine, follows their noise to the bathroom, putting his to the door, and finally opening it to see them naked in a deep embrace. He will take his own medicine, he declares, if Lior will just make sure he puts the right amount on the spoon. And incidentally, he asks his brother in passing, “Are you gay?”

       Furious with the further intrusion, Nir sulks off and gets dressed while Lior, somewhat nervously now but with brotherly love, attends to Ben.

       Nir is now ready to leave, and Lior reminds him that he had told him there might difficulties with meeting up at his place. Nir growls that there will now be problems in getting together at his place as well, suggesting that when he returns for his next leave, Lior might not be so very welcome.

       When Nir exits, Lior returns to playing backyard basketball with his little brother, pausing just long enough to ask Ben what does he know about being gay. The boy responds, as one might expect, that he’s seen it on television.

       So ends what might seem to be a fairly uneventful short movie, if were not that we have learned that Lior is a young man of high morals and deep love, that Nir is not all such a moral being and is obviously not the right mate for Lior, and that perhaps it is time that Lior tells his family of his sexual desires before his brother nonchalantly mentions the fact. Lior hopefully has realized just what his audience has perceived and will act accordingly. Since the film slowly brightens in light as it progresses, we presume that Lior has indeed gotten the message.

 

Los Angeles, February 15, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (February 2023).