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From: sdyer@bbnccv.UUCP (Steve Dyer)
Newsgroups: net.motss,net.movies
Subject: New England Gay Film Festival--Program #1
Message-ID: <626@bbnccv.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 6-Jun-85 02:17:54 EDT
Article-I.D.: bbnccv.626
Posted: Thu Jun  6 02:17:54 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 7-Jun-85 02:14:32 EDT
Distribution: net
Organization: Bolt Beranek and Newman, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 36
Keywords: Israel
Xref: watmath net.motss:1737 net.movies:6556

The opening night of the festival saw the New England premiere of two
Israeli films, certainly raising some curiosity, given the rather dreadful
reports of gay life there.

The first film, "Drifting", is a rather aimless, self-indulgent exercise
about a would-be filmmaker who lives with his grandmother.  The bottom line
is that to be gay in Israel is to be totally alienated from one's family
and one's culture.  There are some interesting denisens of this world who
seem to have walked out of "Liquid Sky," but overall, the movie has next
to nothing new to say about gay lieb und leben. It is tedious in only
90 minutes, with a totally despicable protagonist, and terribly misogynistic
in its treatment of the female characters.  This is interesting as a
sociological brief, but it fails miserably as entertainment, not to mention art.

The other feature, "Each Other", is a 1979 movie that could best be described
as an Israeli "Entre Nous."  It describes the intense friendship two women
develop after a chance meeting on a train to Jerusalem, and their attempts to
recapture this intensity four years later.  I found the two leads immensely
appealing, and most of all, I believed 100% in their infatuation.  This is
the kind of movie that spends as much time on the silences as the conversations
between the two women, a rather heady romantic mixture, which will appeal to
some but probably cause others to run screaming out of the theater.  As to
whether this movie belongs in a gay film festival, it depends: the primary
anima between the two women is friendship, and both women are more straight/
bisexual than exclusively lesbian.  But the emotions ring true, regardless of
the particulars of their sexual orientation.

Some other points: the men in this movie, as is so often found in "women's
movies", might as well come from Mars as from Jerusalem.  They are depicted
as slightly stupid boors, full of machismo, but lacking totally in sensitivity.
Also, the movie does well as a travelogue for Jerusalem: the cinematography
is gorgeous, outshined only by the city itself.
-- 
/Steve Dyer
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