A touching documentary about a gay man, Saar Maoz, born and raised in a religious kibbutz in Israel who’s kicked out of it for ‘not following the rules’, ie. being gay. He moves to London in his early twenties, meets a man he loves and starts a long term relationship. It doesn’t last. Amidst the sorrow and sexual experimentation that follows the break-up, he becomes HIV. He finds support from the London Gay Men’s Choir and then, at 40, finds himself in complicated discussions with the very extensive members of his family about whether to return to live in Israel. What makes it so moving is that the family is very loving yet almost murderously homophobic: ‘Why don’t you just kill yourself?’, asks one of his brothers. This is the type of film where the wish for a sibling’s death encased in an avowal of love is rendered understandable.
Saar Maoz is a great subject: charismatic, exuding energy and intelligence, emotionally transparent yet very vulnerable; moving fluidly between a learned ironic stance and a need for love so naked it feels an ache. What at first seems a contradiction becomes reduced to a tension as the film progresses. It’s encapsulated also by the London Gay Men’s choir, at once camp in their movement, kitschy in their song selection, yet simultaneously pure and true in their singing. The film places Maoz between family, where he is loved but is outcast (the scenes with his father are great), and community where he is a cherished but minor part of a very large group. In between them, Maoz suffers and longs.
Ultimately, London, with it’s cosmopolitan and multi-ethnic culture and make-shift support group of choir, medical lifeline, exes and friends, is nonetheless seen as a place of exile: where Maoz has gone to spare his family angst and shame, at great cost to himself. In the end, he decides to return to Israel, and to his family, in a job — running an HIV/AIDS organisation — that requires him to be out about both his sexuality and his HIV status. It’s a choice that raises lots of interesting questions: what is community? what is family? what does Maoz find in blood-ties that he couldn’t invent or construct for himself in London?
Who’s Gonna Love Me Now is not a formally daring or innovative documentary. But it will resonate and be of interest to anyone familiar with cross-cultural conflicts within families.
José Arroyo