Gaza mon amour: Sweet Tale About Late-Life Romance Leverages Rarely Seen Setting
By Karen Gordon
Rating: B+
Partly inspired by a true story, Gaza mon amour is at its heart a quirky rom com about the pursuit of love in later life. It’s a sweet story about courtship and love, in all of its silliness and beauty, and the joy of finding and pursuing love at a certain age.
Issa, played by Salim Daw, is a 60-year-old fisherman and lifelong bachelor in Gaza. A quiet and seemingly happy man, he goes out fishing in the wee hours of the morning and sells his catch at a stall in the local market.
But something has changed for him. And that seems to be Siham, played by Hiam Abbass, a widow and seamstress who runs a dress shop also in the market that caters to women.
Siham, who is a serious woman and always seems to be focused on chores or work, lives with her divorced, more modern, and more cynical daughter Leila, played by Maisa Abd Elhadi, who works part-time with her mother.
Issa is shy and awkward and not sure how to approach Siham. But on the road to figuring it out he runs into problems with the local authorities. One night, Issa hauls up his nets and finds a treasure: an ancient bronze statue of Apollo, in a priapic state.
Rather than turn it in, he smuggles it past the local police, and sneaks it into his house. Is the discovery of the statue a good love omen? When the local authorities find out, they seize it and throw Issa in jail for a few nights, frustrating his plans to woo Siham.
On top of that, Issa made the tactical error of letting his sister, Manal (Manal Awad) know that he plans to get married. Although he’s warned her to stay out of this, she of course doesn’t, to Issa’s irritation. Issa has enough on his hands without becoming Manal’s project.
PROUDLY SUPPORTS ORIGINAL-CIN
Co-written and directed by twin brothers Tarzan Nasser and Arab Nasser, Gaza mon amour lightly touches on day-to-day life in Gaza but is really focused on Issa and his romantic plight. And they’re ably helped here by a fantastic cast. A lot of the joy of the film comes from the performances, in particular the two leads.
Issa is a man of determination but few words. Daw’s portrayal is wonderful. It’s a performance that conveys Issa’s thoughts and anxieties through internal reactions and body language. He’s created a character who is quirky and out of practice in the romantic realm. He is someone we can root for. Abbass is also wonderful as Siham, who is clearly not sure of what to make of Issa’s awkward attention.
Given that this is set in Gaza, politics and problems are present, but in the background. The film doesn’t lean heavily in one direction or another. Issa’s direct problems come from the local Hamas authorities that check his nightly haul, and ultimately confiscate his treasure and throw him in jail.
In the background on TV, people debate problems posed by Hamas leadership. The electricity is intermittent. Israeli bombs fall now and then, and the Israelis impose restrictions on where Issa can fish. For the little guy, the ordinary Gazan, life offers pressures from several directions.
The film is inspired by the true story of the discovery of a bronze sculpture, known as Apollo of Gaza, that a fisherman claimed to have pulled from the sea in 2014 and tried to sell privately. Authorities from Hamas seized it to determine its value. In the real-world story, the fisherman waits with frustration for his financial reward.
In Gaza mon amour, Issa waits, sometimes through his frustration too, aiming for a different and arguably more precious kind of reward.
Gaza mon amour. Directed by Arab Nasser and Tarzan Nasser. Starring Hiam Abbass and Salim Daw. Available on VOD/Digital November 5.