Currently Watching: 'Yossi' and 'Holy Smoke'

Both of these films in this entry are rewatches where one film is explicitly queer, and one is mentioned because the viewer here is queer.

As an on-going feature of the blog end of It’s a Sin: Queer Cinema Podcast, I will feature films that I am currently watching apart from the selections to be reviewed. This weekend, I watched a few films with Yossi and Holy Smoke featured in today’s entry. Links in the “Where to Watch” are true as of the date of this posting (in the US. Availability can always change in the streaming world).

Yossi

• Director: Fox Eytan

• Cast: Ohad Knoller, Lior Ashkenzi, Orly Silbersatz, Oz Zehavi, Ola Schur Selektar

• Distributor: Strand Releasing

• Year: 2012

• Where to Watch: AppleTV, AmazonPrime, YouTube, GooglePlay, Vudu

Before Brokeback Mountain became the cultural breakthrough for mainstream America regarding LGBTQIA+ acceptance, Israeli cinema had Yossi & Jagger, where two young men meeting their military obligation somehow meet and fall in love during war time. Yossi follows up ten years later with the title character who, while successful in his civilian life as a doctor, carries his pain from combat and the loss of his lover that he can’t bring himself to talk about. Even in times friendlier to queer people, openness and authenticity are difficult for him. As for finding healing and love, it’s a chance meeting with the handsome young soldier Tom, who helps him start on his journey towards happiness.

Yossi, while being the sequel to Yossi & Jagger, can be seen as on its own as the back story of his time in the army and his loss of Jagger are easily established in the first act. His civilian life up to this point has its share of pitfalls: the lack of a social life, sleeping in the hospital, and an online hookup gone bad (with body image issues to boot), not to mention that his attempt to talk to Jagger’s parents doesn’t go well (which clearly is very similar to the one Ennis has with Jack Twist’s parents in Brokeback Mountain). While the second act where Yossi leaves Tel Aviv for a work-ordered vacation has more levity, the struggle to relax and enjoy himself is the main conflict (and allowing himself to be seen by someone else). Overall, the storytelling is balance and nuanced, not going overly morose in the first act or cloying in the positivity in the second. And Yossi succeeds in getting the viewer to root for this man in overcoming his very relatable struggles.

Personal confession: this movie is quite the tear-jerker for me.

Holy Smoke

• Director: Jane Campion

• Cast: Kate Winslet, Harvey Keitel, Julie Hamilton, Tim Robertson, Sophie Lee, Dave Wylie, Paul Goddard, Pam Grier

• Distributor: Miramax

• Year: 1998

• Where to Watch: AppleTV, AmazonPrime, GooglePlay, Vudu, Pluto

This is my half-baked take on how Holy Smoke can be seen as a queer text, which I think I’ll develop more some time in the future. As a queer person watching this movie, some of these issues with identity and personal choices, and how these things conflict with a societal view of what is normal resonate with me.

Funny enough, how this supposedly normal set of parents learning that Ruth (portrayed by Kate Winslet) is in some far-off strange cult in India is on-point. Interestingly, the idea of what is normal is turned on its head in Holy Smoke.

How normal is this suburban Australian family? While Ruth’s mother seems to be an ordinary middle-aged woman, her husband lounges around the house in a speedo and doesn’t bother to cover up when he and his wife hear the news about Ruth from her best friend visiting their home. Ruth’s sibling include Robbie, the goofball with the wife who cheats on him with her parasocial relationships with celebrities, and Tim, a gay man who likes to camp it up yet is desperate to be seen as normal. Not surprisingly, no one is truly happy in their lives, yet they all somehow see Ruth finding a non-traditional religion the threat. So much so they are willing to put $10K to have PJ Walters (a cult deprogrammer/exit interviewer memorably portrayed by Harvey Keitel) arrive in what Ruth later mocks as his “uniform of individuality:” black shirt, jeans, and cowboy boots.

In this dark comedy, Ruth fights to maintain her agency and sense of self while PJ tries to take those away from her despite his constant claims of wanting to empower her.

Complicit in this intervention are the two queer supporting characters Tim and his partner Yani (who still manages to put his father-in-law off with his talk about gayness). Their presence along with everything this hot mess of a family shows the viewer demonstrates how fragile the peace is. Ultimately, the family’s foundation of normalcy falls apart after the intervention.

$10k wasted on what turns out to be an expensive whore flown in from the States and not much going on for the family in the end. I definitely see the problems of cis-heteronormativity here along with how shaky the foundations for the family and other societal institutions are. Some more thoughts on this for sure in the future.