by Douglas Messerli
Itai Jamshy (screenwriter and director) מנגד (Aloof) / 2020 [15 minutes]
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This short film basically
alternates the major character, Yariv’s (Nadav Portiansky) immersion in his
sibling’s family life while also regularly visiting a local gay sauna, where he
is both attracted to and repelled by the sexual activities he observes.
Aloof is a film about
a character who feels not only like an outsider to the family life of his
siblings, but to the gay world to which he increasingly is becoming attracted.
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As Jamsky writes:
“It wasn't only that I became an
anomalous member of the nuclear family, I also couldn't find my place in the
Tel-Aviv gay scene. I found myself displaced - not gay enough, not straight
enough, not feminine enough, not manly enough. Through this film I wanted to
portray of feeling like a stranger wherever you go, I payed homage to films
from the Queer New Cinema with the use of time and place displacement,
navigating through a non-linear story structure, to make way for the confusion
of the hero.”
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If at first he refuses to
become involved in the sauna sex scenes, over the time that the short narrative
takes us, he gradually becomes more and more involved, finally entering in the
gay world with his encounter with a man who has purposely bound his eyes and
mouth in black, in a sense inviting anyone such as the shy photographer into
his world in order to almost brutally fuck him without the judgmental stare of
open eyes. It is a powerful scene, as the hero suddenly discovers his own
sexuality without the metaphoric eye of the camera symbolized by human vision.
Yet guilt continues in this
film up until the very last moment, when Yariv discovers in his locker a
picture in which, supposedly gathered around his family, he alone is
represented, cut away
from all others. It is a powerful representation of both the feeling of
familial isolation and necessary severance from family that many of not most
gay men suddenly recognize is necessary for survival.
The character Jamsky has
created is not purposely “aloof,” but made to feel that way both within and
outside of the gay world into which he discovers himself descending—and yes, in
this case as with many a gay man coming to terms with their “difference,” it is,
unfortunately, a bit like a descent into hell.
The pull of the Jewish values
of family and the isolation to which the central character must now admit has seldom
been so clearly illuminated.
Los Angeles, February 21, 2025
Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (February 2025).
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