Like Me: love, lust and acting

REVIEW by Drew Rowsome - photos courtesy of Breaking Glass Pictures
17 Mar 2023 -

There is a reason that so many of history's great actors have been gay. After all, every young gay boy has had to learn to present a realistic facade in order to fit in or to hide their sexuality. In Like Me, Tom (Yoav Keren) is a very good actor, but he is floundering in the roles he has created for himself. We see him in theatre classes, inventing plausible excuses for screwing up his job as a pizza delivery person, continually insisting he is being authentic, posting videos of the great events he is part of, and trying to conceal his crush on his best friend and fellow aspiring actor, Gilad (Mendi Barsheshet). Even the initial aftermath of the threesome that opens the film, ends with Tom contriving a reason to leave. Tom and Gilad are in rehearsal for what seems to be a student production of The Portrait of Dorian Gray. Filmmaker Eyal Kantor cuts to rehearsals without providing context, leaving the audience to puzzle out what is reality and what is performance. It is a blunt metaphor for what is happening in Tom's mind.

For unspecified, but easily deducible considering that Tom is a habitual liar and layabout, Tom's father is kicking him out. When Tom's fantasies of a gorgeous apartment on the waterfront are crushed by financial reality, he falls in with an older fashion photographer Rami (Gal Amital). Rami uses his camera, and flattery laced with sex and nudity positive platitudes, to convince Tom to pose nude. Tom uses flattery and nudity to convince Rami to give him money and a place to stay. It is a co-dependent transactional relationship that both try to convince the other is love. Rami masturbates while Tom undulates, Tom tells Gilad that he has had sex with a man for money. The truth is very elusive. But Gilad is acting as well. And being seduced. The television series job that he has been boasting about has collapsed, but Gilad's agent is still stringing him along. And his determination to be a marine in Israel's compulsory military service also flops, not stopping him from having Tom help him shoot videos extolling the virtues of training to be a marine.

Like Me is a slice of life, occurring over the period of rehearsal for the school's final production, so the plot doesn't aim for a resolution, it is all about exploring the cracks in these character's projections. Keren is an intriguing presence, though he gets naked frequently it is a far from naked performance. Somehow he manages to convey what he is acting as well as the calculation that is involved, while revealing just how much pain it is causing him. He is well matched in Barsheshet and Amital who are more stereotypically handsome and have to add a layer of naivity to their performances to make the plot work. As with any coming out story, one can't help but root for Tom and Gilad, and for Tom and Rami, but one also wants to warn both of them to guard their hearts. While Gilad has been cast as Dorian Gray, which also makes senses on a superficial physical level thanks to Barsheshet's beauty, it is Tom who is a constructed veneer hiding a more unpleasant interior. When the canvas cracks, in the vivid fight and seduction scenes, Like Me soars.

Like Me also has fun satirizing theatre itself. The self-importance of the students is off the charts but totally necessary to counteract the hilarious monstrosity of the pompous instructor/director. But a student's comic lampooning of the teacher, is undercut when Tom gets a withering assessment of the value of being an actor from a prospective landlord. Like Me also points out the vicious and distancing narcissism that social media and texting have created. Many of these characters only feel like they exist when communication, or acting, electronically. That leads to one minor complaint about Like Me: why are the texts between the characters not subtitled? It feels as if some important information has been left out as the texts often have crucial consequences. Most importantly Like Me and particularly Keren, capture that giddy process of trying on roles to become oneself, of falling in love for all the wrong reasons, and succumbing to the sensuality of another's gaze. None of which is necessarily exclusive to actors or being gay.