The Toronto Jewish Film Festival: packed with LGBTQ highlights

03 Jun 2021 -

While Inside Out is still in its full streaming glory, the Toronto Jewish Film Festival kicks off. Not only do the festivals overlap with streams of Two (a comedy about lesbians and insemination), there are four other films that would fit seamlessly into an LGBTQ film festival. I was lucky enough to screen three of them, missing only the documentary Marry Me However that explores "the emotional devastation wrought by marrying against one’s sexual orientation for the sake of complying with Orthodox religious obligations is examined through the experience of gay and lesbian Orthodox Jews." 

Acclaimed film director Francois Ozon's Summer of 85 is a cinematic roller coaster ride that alternates between unabashed romanticism, mystery and psychological melodrama. The central romance between two incredibly naturalistic (except that they are both stunning) young men is a swoon worth rom-com. Alexis (Felix Lefebvre) is on summer break after graduating high school. He has to decide whether to get a job or pursue his writing with the encouragement of his hunky literature professor. because he lives in an idyllic seaside town, he borrows a sailboat from a friend and, while mulling his options and working on his tan, a storm comes up and he capsizes. Fortunately he is rescued, in true heroic fashion, by David (Benjamin Voisin) and metaphorical lightning strikes.

It is not a spoiler to reveal that the film is based on the YA novel Dance On My Grave, as the film begins with Alexis arrested for an unspecified crime while his voiceover muses on his fascination with death. He turns to the camera and pronounces that "If you don't want to know about a corpse I knew when he was alive, this story is not for you." Don't believe him, the story is for everyone who has every fallen in love or has always wanted to. The central mystery can be seen coming from very early on but that doesn't interfere with the emotional devastation that the final scenes create. Being a French film, there are subtle subplots and everyone is deliciously literate: the duo read Verlaine's love poems to Rimbaud together before finally making love. Summer of 85 was a hit at Cannes and it deserves to be the hit of the Toronto Jewish Film Festival.

The Jewish content in Summer of 85 is very subtle but in Kiss Me Kosher it is brash and upfront. And hilarious. Shira, the manager/owner of an Israeli bar named "The Real Jewish Princess" is a lesbian lothario who becomes engaged to Maria, a German botanist working on her PHD. The bar was financed by Shira's grandmother who not only does the books but has a commanding portrait that looms over the bar itself. She is conducting a tentative romance with an Arab doctor while also being horrified by Shira's choice of potentially marrying ""Hitler's spawn." Shira's father is a Zionist who believes they are liberating the West Bank, not occupying it. Shira's brother is filming Shira and Maria for a school project and enjoys instigating conflict to get the footage he wants. When Maria's parents arrive, flat-out farce breaks loose.

Everyone has crack comic timing in whatever of the multiple languages they speak but Rivka Michaeli as the grandmother steals the spotlight with deadpan quips, vicious insults and merely arching an eyebrow. It is a tour de force diva performance from a veteran actress. The film was until recently titled Kiss Me Before It Blows Up and, while the frothy hilarity with pitch black comedy undertones spins giddily for its entire length, the final joke and credit sequence falls flat. Recent events render an audacious gag troublesome but one can't help but admire the filmmakers' sheer nerve. Who can resist spunky lesbians in love? Especially when their major obstacle is a diminutive dynamo who makes Sophia Petrillo look like a shrinking violet.

We Were the Others is a straightforward (pun intended) documentary on the history of gay men in Israel. The interviews are fascinating even though they cover little new ground. It is the specifics that are more intriguing. How the Israeli press demonized gay men. Where the cruising grounds were in various cities. That gay men travelled to Amsterdam and London specifically to visit gay bars which did not exist in Israel. An aerospace engineer is quietly removed from his high-ranking position in the Israeli army and emigrates to Canada to escape the shame and to live and love openly. A prominent poet reads Allen Ginsberg's Howl and faints with excitement. 

What elevates We Were the Others is the recreations of pivotal scenes of cruising and connection. Filmed meticulously in the style of vintage porn, segments are so seamless that at first I just accepted them as news footage. And there is also news footage that blends seamlessly with the recreations to create some new hybrid of fictionalized documentary that is very effective and evocative. Of course Israel has long since come to its senses, to the point where it has been accused of pinkwashing to distract from its other human rights abuses. Two of the interviewees watch the Tel Aviv Pride parade from a rooftop and muse on how different their journey was compared to the liberated masses cavorting below. It is poignant and sweet.

Of course the Toronto Jewish Film Festival also contains many non-gay films (though I would argue that all art forms are inherently gay and it is just a question of degree) and it is well worth perusing the online catalogue. In honour of the late Carl Reiner, there are streams of colourized versions, which he supervised, of his favourite The Dick Van Dyke Show episodes. Reiner is further honoured with streams of the most memorable sketches from Your Show of Shows. Here We Are was honoured with four Israeli Film Academy Awards and is the tale of a father struggling with raising an autistic son. The documentary Leonard Cohen, Portrait of the Artist gets a restoration including the soundtrack. And a wide range of films of every description plus Q&As.