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.
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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.
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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).
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