Eytan Fox | Ba'al Ba'al Lev (Gotta Have Heart) / 1997 [appeared on Israel Television, Channel 2 as an episode of the series “Short Stories about Love”]

where dreams come true

by Douglas Messerli

 

Gal Uchovsky (screenplay), Eytan Fox (director), Ba'al Ba'al Lev (Gotta Have Heart) / 1997  [appeared on Israel Television, Channel 2 as an episode of the series “Short Stories about Love”]

 

In a year which portrayed LGBTQ love primarily as a world of indecision, confusion, and inevitable disappointment and violence (some representative films being Alan Berliner’s Ma Vie en Rose, William Roth’s Floating, Tony Vitale’s Kiss Me, Guido, Yolanda García Serrano and Juan Luis Iborra’s Love of Man, Richard Kwietniowski’s Love and Death on Long Island, Adolfo Aristarain’s Martin (hache), Christophe Malavoy’s The Fire That Burns, and Steven Mattias’ Bent, to name just a few) Eythan Fox’s early short film, Gotta Have Heart (Ba'al Ba'al Lev), seems to be a wonderful exception in its fantasy-like musical presentation of events and its ultimately open acceptance of gay love.

     In the small Israeli town in which action takes place, the handsome Guri (Tzak Berkman) is already out to his best female friend, Mitzi (Gisele Silver), who alternately plays the role that used to be described as a fag-hag, as well as appearing to be his girlfriend as a cover. The sissy boy, Nohav (Uri Omanuti), however, is clearly recognized by the community as a gay boy, yet is beloved for his ability to teach the young townspeople new dances at the nightly folk-dance gatherings which seem to represent the town’s major social activity.

      Both Guri and Nohav seek to escape to Tel Aviv, Guri hoping to be accepted by the Academy to study architecture and Nohav dreaming of being a paratrooper or any other possible figure to take him away from the small-town mores.

      Moreover, Nohav also knows Guri’s secret since, as we later discover, they encountered one other one evening at a Tel Aviv gay bar.

      Into this rather joyous community of a hot-dog stand (run by Guri and Mitzi), an ice-cream truck, singing, and more dancing, wanders the beautiful dark and highly sexually experienced Merito, who turns the heads of all the girls, including Mitzi—as well as catching the eye of Guri.

      Mitzi is among the first of Merito’s choices, she, after sex with the stud, completely falling in love with him, only to just as quickly discover that it was meant only as a one-night stand. She has also been disgusted by his seemingly endless bathing habits after sex, as if being with her somehow had utterly sullied him.

      Guri, who sits out the dances at the folk-dance gatherings, is disturbed by Mitzi’s absence, and even though she eventually shows up, along with, soon after, Merito, their relationship is slightly changed by her actions. And she observes him choosing another girl for the last coupled dance, she asks Guri if they can leave.

       Basically, Guri has shied away from Nohav, obviously for fear of being identified as gay. But this evening, as Mitzi leaves his company early, he begins talking with the eagerly friendly Nohav, who it’s clear absolutely dotes on Guri. Before they know it they are talking about Eurovision, the TV musical competition show that has been running for several decades on European TV. The gay boy invites Guri to his home, where he encounters almost a museum to Eurovision, including records of all the winning performances, including Dana’s 1970 winning performance representing Ireland. Nohav’s own mother was a back-up singer Ishhar Cohen who stopped singing when she married. His enthusiasm is so utterly charming, that you might imagine him doing almost anything, certainly escaping as he is desperate to do, to Tel Aviv.

 

    In the midst this, and for the first time, Guri actually opens up and talks about his fears of not being accepted by the Academy. Nohav, in turn, gets an opportunity to praise Guri’s talents, assuring him that he will get accepted because it’s his dream. Guri warns him, however, that dreams just as often fail, and do come true, suggesting that he is “such a baby.” Yet Nohav reminds him that dreams do come true. When Guri himself enlisted, he wanted to become a paratrooper, and it did happen that way.

      It was a goal, Guri reminds him, and he worked hard for it.

      But Nohav, clearly a dreamer, shares with his would-be-lover his own dream. He takes out a tape of Hanna Aharoni. Her picture, in fact, hangs in the dance club. And it turns out that she was the original performer of the “Pomegranate,” the dance, with couples only, that ends each evening of the town’s folk-dancing activities.

 

     In Nohav’s dream, she comes to the Community Center where they are dancing, wearing the dress she wore on the Ed Sullivan show. “I’m on the floor, dancing with the one I love most. We’re dancing really fast, and everyone’s watching. Suddenly the song changes, and there is Frida Boccara,” the famous French singer who won the Eurovision contest in Madrid in 1969 singing "Un jour, un enfant."  In Nohav’s fantasy, the singers alternate before each singing their own song together. Everyone applauds, and they disappear, the audience’s turning back to him and the boy he is dancing with.

        We should all applaud Uri Omanuti’s totally engaging performance.

        As he goes to leave, Guri admits that he saw Nohav at the Tel Aviv bar and knows that his friend has seen him there as well. But that was an exception, a mistake, Guri argues, that he won’t make again, attempting to dash any further fantasies that Nohav may have about a gay relationship with him.

       Over the next couple of days, Merito picks up other women, but finally turns to Guri, inviting him over to his place just before the folk dancing hour.

       Oddly enough, without seemingly any trepidation, Guri shows up, and enters the apartment to find Merito is already lying on the bed in only his jockey shorts. Guri too sits down on the bed, and after an offering of a half of watermelon—perhaps the strangest pre-coital hors d'oeuvres ever served on the screen. Merito begins to seduce the boy, telling him that it’s time for him to get what he wants as well, since he’s noticed him watching him. He encourages Guri to simply follow his instructions.

       Clearly a pro, in the way that Doris Day might have imagined Rock Hudson, the lights go dim, and colored lights begin blinking on the headboard of the bed, as we watch, rather surprisingly, Merito guides Guri into position to fuck him. It’s clear that the bi-sexual lothario enjoys, every now and then, a good fuck.

       By this time there is no turning back for Guri, who without any ado has not only “come out,” so to speak, but engaged in his first sexual experience in a spectacular manner that might almost be said to match Nohav’s fantasies. But he too is put off some as he peeks into the bathroom after sex, where Merito is in the tub busy cleaning up his body. As Guri later reassures Mitzi, Merito’s cleaning fetish has nothing at all to do with her; this is just the way reacts to sex.

       Immediately after, Guri receives a letter from the Academy: he has been accepted! He rushes off to the final folk dance session of the year to share the good news. The final Pomegranate dance is about to begin, and in honor of Guri’s good news, the leader demands that he now join the dance, asking him to choose a partner.

       Merito, realizing that this is Guri’s last appearance—and perhaps his own as well—offers up his services. But Guri walks past him, saying that he has promised this dance to someone else.

 

        He walks over to Nohav, takes him in his arms and begins the dance, the others joining in, as in what appears to be a hologram, both Bocca and Aharoni take the stage to sing, the audience applauding before turning back to watch Nohav and Guri finish out their dance. Nohav’s dreams have come true after all.

       The final quicky piece concerns the future of Mitzi, who will now must be satisfied to marry the dance wallflower, perhaps a nice guy after all. Nohav shows up in a Paratrooper suit, and Guri sings goodbye to Mitzi and all his other friends. Everyone is happy in this small Israeli town, perhaps on the border or even within Gaza. Besides, their most beloved citizens are now all about to escape to the big city where things are more exciting, and where they can truly enact their own sexualities.

      Although, Fox’s film was not exclusively about “coming out,” it certainly takes up that theme in a manner that—a year before what I describe as the first of the thousands of Type B “coming out” films, Get Real and Edge of Seventeen appeared—makes those that follow sound like a echo. Fox’s film, if nothing else, is musical fantasy that lays out the template for all the rest of the Type B coming out films that came after.

 

Los Angeles, September 9, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (September 2024).