Patreon Pick – Gaza mon amour

This special reward is available to Patreon patrons who pledge at the $10 or $20 monthly levels. Each month, those patrons will pick a film for me to review. If they choose, they also get to include some of their thoughts about the movie. This Pick comes from Bekah Lindstrom.

Gaza mon amour (2020)
Written and directed by Tarzan Nasser and Arab Nasser

The popular image of something and reality are often oceans apart, especially when we in the West conceptualize something. At the time of this writing, Gaza is something beyond decency, brutally ravaged by a genocide that just keeps going in broad daylight. That doesn’t mean life has always been like this for the Palestinians. They have had a persistent resiliency, even while walled off and treated in the most subhuman manner. The human spirit is a tough thing to extinguish. It isn’t impossible, but it can happen. Gaza mon amour is a film about the persistence of the heart in the latter years of a person’s life and how the desire for love lives on.

Issa (Salim Dau) is a 60-year-old fisherman who crosses a checkpoint every night, where he catches a decent amount and returns it to sell it in the market. Each morning he exchanges a few words with Siham (Hiam Abbass), a widow close to his age and her divorced daughter, Leila. We glimpse both women at home, learning about the complications in their lives as Siham worries about having her hours cut at her seamstress job and Leila dreams of attending the local university. Siham is painfully shy around Siham but knows he wants to be with her. On the other hand, his sister Manal brings in a parade of women she thinks are more appropriate for her brother. All the while, the signs of occupation and oppression are there in the background, yet they do not overshadow the intense love growing between our two central characters. And then there’s the Apollo statue.

Gaza mon amour is a weird movie. The film suddenly goes down an unexpected path when Siham goes fishing one evening and retrieves a bronze statue of Apollo with an erection. He understands that taking this will put him under the scrutiny of the occupation, but he does so anyway. This slightly absurd film allows just enough stylization to make it feel magical around the edges but never overindulging in a saccharin way. The movie acknowledges the power outage caused by the occupying force – we watch Siham roll out bread dough by flashlight – and we hear about Hamas on news reports in the background, but the filmmakers are insistent that people’s lives are far more complex than these things. Palestinians live with the same intricate web of relationships & challenges as anyone else. They will not let what is happening around them take away that aspect of their humanity.

The visual quality of this film is incredible. The color palette has been desaturated just enough to give the image a unique texture. There’s also some fantastic use of digital cinematography because every frame is rich with detail. A lot of the shots were done or made to look like they were on overcast days, which you think would make the film feel bleak. Instead, it provides the perfect melancholy atmosphere to underline Issa and Siham’s yearning for love. This isn’t the story of a youthful search for your soulmate, but two people who understand what life feels like, how your thoughts change, and how your body changes. The love that eventually forms between them isn’t rooted in momentary lust but in a need to be connected to someone they admire.

The Apollo statue, with its brazen sexuality, seems to be a message from the gods to Issa. He needs to embrace his desire for Siham and actually talk to her. The phallus breaks off the statue early on, and the fisherman wraps it in a towel, awkwardly unsure what to do with it. But when the authorities become aware of what he has, Issa suddenly feels emboldened. While the statue may be confiscated, the whole affair awakens something in him, leading to a fantastic scene on the stairs outside Siham’s apartment, where our two leads and Lelia cross paths for a rather unexpected ending.

The balancing act accomplished in Gaza mon amour is extremely impressive. After watching several Palestinian films earlier this year, I noted that most were from the West Bank and figured Gaza’s film production must not be as impressive. This film completely shut that down, as I think it could stand toe-to-toe with any Hollywood melodrama. Much of this is due to filmmakers holding their production to an extremely high standard and two lead actors with the experience to deliver performances that are human, comedic, and endearing without being cloying. 

All the while, we are not allowed to forget that these people are constantly monitored and policed by an occupying force. The muted color palette reflects the constant blackouts intentionally inflicted on the residents of Gaza. Issa’s nightly passing through a checkpoint doesn’t let us forget that Gaza is a concentration camp. The title, “Gaza mon amour,” refers to Alain Resnais’s Hiroshima, Mon Amour and the directors’ declaration of their adoration for their home. For many, 2023 was the year they first learned how bad things were in Gaza. I don’t think we should let Palestinians be framed entirely as victims of genocide. They are a people the rest of us could learn a lot from, to be defiant in the face of such horrors, to never forget that community & love carry us through the night.