Amos Guttman | בר 51 (Bar 51) / 1986

a funny valentine

by Douglas Messerli

 

Amos Guttman and Eli Tavor (screenplay), Amos Guttman (director) בר 51 (Bar 51) / 1986

 

Although there are numerous gay men, lesbians, transvestites, and transgender figures throughout Israeli director Amos Guttman’s sophomore feature film, Bar 51, representing them, particularly in 1986 when the film was released, as taboo figures on the outside of Israeli culture, the most perverse characters in this film are not the LGBTQ figures, but a seemingly innocent brother and sister, Thomas (Juliano Mer-Khamis) and Mariana (Smadar Kilchinsky) who have just escaped their community of Migdal Haemek in northern Israel to Tel Aviv after their mother’s death.

     Although Thomas has a job already lined up as a hotel porter/room attendant, and his sister is hired as a hotel maid, he quickly loses the job by stealing food from the kitchen to wine and dine his sister in an empty suite.

     We have already perceived in their earlier days back in Migdal Haemek that Thomas is disturbingly obsessed with his sister, crawling down from his upper bunk bed into her bed each night more to comfort himself that his sister, who although younger and thinner than her buff and quite beautiful brother, is clearly mentally stronger than he is. Their love, which is not sexual, is however clearly unnatural, their mother dying mother repeated insisting that he return to his own bed.

      In Tel Aviv, now without money or a place to live, they are forced to occupy an empty space in an abandoned concrete building, while he wanders the Bat 51’s Old Central Bus Station territory, a steamy and dusty hell filled with fiends in which gay men have open sex and mad mothers with their terrified tots wander the dark streets. Critic Amir Kaminer, an early supporter of Guttman’s films, near perfectly describes the scene and the events that follow:

 

“Tel Aviv is always portrayed in Guttman’s films as a stylized, outlandish, dreamy, expressionistic, and out-of-touch city. At the same time, it is also often depicted as a nocturnal, decayed, and decrepit place. At times, one is left feeling a fairytale-like sense of detachment – as if they might as well be anywhere – but also a loss of innocence. The scene that is most evocative of Tel Aviv life à-la Guttman is undoubtedly Bat 51’s Old Central Bus Station scene, immaculately shot by Yossi Wein. At the heart of the film are orphaned siblings, Thomas (the late Juliano Mer- Khamis) and Marianna (Smadar Kilchinsky), who leave their small town and head to the big city.”

“The two find shelter in the Old Central Bus Station area and Thomas goes out to explore their new surroundings. Whilst out and about, he is exposed to a dark, violent, hostile, exploitative and sexualized world with criminals and prostitutes galore. Through the smokey emissions of the last buses pulling into their depot for the night, she emerges – Apolonia Goldstein (Ada Valerie-Tal); the sequin-clad queen of the night, with her plunging neckline and fake jewelry. She asks Thomas to join her for coffee and some sandwiches and later, to set up shop at her place and in her bed."

    The kitschy decorated apartment where the transgender Apolonia offers brother a sister beds, is perhaps, given Mariana’s awe, the most beautiful place the siblings have ever seen. But Thomas is not at all appreciative of his role of bed mate for the elderly bar singer, who evidently usually shares it with her choreographer, Karl (Mosko Alkalai). And when she falls asleep, he sneaks out into the living room to cuddle up to Mariana who has been given a living room divan on which to sleep. Finding them there together in the morning, Apolonia is furious, believing Thomas has lied to her by actually bringing in his girlfriend. But both assure her that they are in fact brother and sister, perhaps in her mind an even worse situation given how she has awakened to find them, in each other’s arms.

       Nonetheless, she finds a job for Thomas as a bartender in a club owned by Luna (Belinka Metzner) who allows Mariana a free range of minor helping roles around Bar 51, a kicky little gay bar that actually existed, which features fully choreographed musical numbers by both Apolonia and her rival, Zara (Irit Shelag) who dances with an American named Nicholas (David Patrick Wilson), who in Washington, D.C. evidently had been a real ballet dancer before he broke a tendon. Nicholas also lives with Zara, but it doesn’t take her long to begin trying to attract a quite willing Thomas. And before the sibling duo has even become adjusted to life in Apolonia’s flat, Thomas has arranged for them to move, unceremoniously, to Zara’s apartment, where Mariana becomes friends with Zara’s quite effeminate gay brother, who goes by the name of Aranjuez (but whose real name, which Zara continues to call him, is Israel). Thomas meanwhile fucks Zara in a manner which might almost be described as a willing rape.

 

     Mariana suddenly reveals to her brother and others that her one desire in life is to become a dancer, and Nicholas helps find her entry into a dance school; now that Thomas has a salary (paid without his knowledge by Apolonia) he begrudgingly shells out for her dancing lessons, but refuses to quickly leave the studio, constantly checking up on her and, when he is finally asked to leave, waits like a watch dog outside for her to finish, even though Nicholas attempts to accompany her home. She attempts to pull away, realizing that their relationship has become far too unhealthy, and also needing the space in which to develop her own life.

      Tensions naturally arise, once more, as the jealous Thomas resents Nicholas, with a fight ensuing, which ends with Thomas, Mariana, and Nicholas being thrown out of Zara’s flat. The siblings have no choice but to return to Apolonia, Mariana counseling her brother to sincerely apologize. He does apologize, as Apolonia angrily explains all she has done for him and how ungrateful he has been. But instead of dealing with her righteousness, he once more rejects her.

     Amir Kaminer again captures the scene with a far fuller knowledge of Israeli culture than I could possibly convey, and instead of quoting from him, I’ll let that critic and friend of Guttman speak:

 

 “Apolonia who is left feeling hurt after a row she’d just had with Thomas, her young lover, goes for a soak in the bath.

     Marianna, meanwhile, has sat [down] in Apolonia’s tacky and kitsch-fuelled lounge, watching the grande dame of Hebrew folk music singalongs, Sarah’le Sharon on TV, trying to entertain the troops: “Some days, you start having all these thoughts and you just want to cry. But instead of crying, you sing. And when you sing in a group, you end up feeling amazing. That is the feeling I want all of us to experience here tonight; together. It’s a chance to sing only with our boys and girls in uniform, whose face may be a bit tired, but who are definitely up for a singalong.”

     Whilst an accordion plays in the background and someone is heard singing, “a kind and fair-eyed girl we have in the Land of Israel / and the nicest ever boy you could ask or pray for,” Marianna notices all the bath foam overflowing from the bathtub into the living room. As it turns out, Apolonia, who could not be further removed from this image of the kind and fair-eyed girl, has just slit her own wrists.”

      Thomas and Mariana wrap her wrists to stop the bleeding, and Apolonia recovers. But it is clear they no longer have a place in her life. Zara, as she has long planned, evidently heads off to Greece, while Nicholas attempts to train Mariana to replace her in their dance, which includes nudity, echoed throughout the film with the song Mariana sings early in the film, “My Funny Valentine,” which if you recall in the movie version of George Sidney’s Pal Joey, Kim Novak is supposed to sing as a strip number (her modesty is saved by Frank Sinatra, who in doing so proves that he loves her and not the true owner of the club, the society matron and Sinatra’s supposed lover, Rita Hayworth). Entering the bar to watch her perform, Thomas begs her to go away with him yet again, but this Mariana openly refuses, arguing that she must live her life the way she wants to. Nicholas rushes to her side, with Thomas making a clear threat: “You think you’ll get off so easy. You think I’ll let you?”

      She goes off with Nicholos, while Thomas returns to his concrete bunker, spending most of his days now on drugs. Strangely, it is Aranjuez, Zara’s brother, the only gay character in this film, who comes to live with and look after Thomas, after himself being beaten by a group of homophobes. Trying to urge Thomas, whom it is clear he also loves, back into life, Aranjeuz shops, fixes up the place the best he can, and cares for the now empty straight man who can no longer look after himself.

      When Thomas finally rallies to leave his bunker, he returns to the club only to find that his sister has now moved onto another club. He goes to the place, only to discover that it is a club for members only, and not at all a gay strip bar, but an upscale dining spot where she dances as a backup singer with another girl for the vocal star. Mariana invites him in to watch the show, but it is clear he can hear or see nothing but her, and when she finishes, he attempts to accompany her home. She refuses, insisting that Nicholas will soon pick her up. But when she calls him we can see that he is in a drunken stupor unable to come to her aid.

      She begins the walk with her brother, he insisting she return just for a moment with him to the bunker. Unable to refuse, she accompanies him there, only to find Aranjeuz out on an errand. Gradually, Thomas forces her to remain and attempts to rape her, tearing off her blouse and mounting her. She picks up a knife laying nearby, and for a moment he is about to wrest it away from her, but gives her permission, finally, to proceed. She stabs him, blood spilling first from his nose over her face.

      When Aranjeuz returns, he discovers her hovering over her brother’s dead body, refusing to even let Aranjeuz touch him, a bit like Maria at the end of West Side Story, protective of the man who has died for her. We have no idea, however, whether Mariana might ever be able to return to a “normal” life. There are no pall-bearers to haul this body off the stage, and if she calls the police surely she will be charged with murder.

      In the documentary about the life and death of director Guttman—who died of AIDS in in 1993 at the young age of 39, at the beginning of a career that after years of rejection was just beginning to draw favorable attention—his Romanian-born father, after his son’s four earliest films pleaded with his son “to stop putting all that gay stuff on screen.” Guttman, did just that, demonstrating that heterosexual characters are far more perverse and destructive than any homosexual or lesbian could possibly even imagine. The gay boy here offers the only love with no strings attached.

 

Los Angeles, August 5, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (August 2024).