‘Coexistence, My Ass!’ Review: Israeli Comedian Makes for a Compelling Guide to the Middle East Mess in Engaging Doc
Part of the buzz of working on a documentary must be not knowing where the story will end exactly, in triumph or tragedy. But surely even the filmmakers behind Coexistence, My Ass! may not have foreseen quite how dark a turn history would take when they started around 2020 filming Jewish Israeli comedian-protestor Noam Shuster Eliassi. A passionate leftist advocate for equal rights for both Palestinians and Jews, Noam is tracked for the first two thirds of this engaging film as she tries to change hearts and minds through comedy.
Then suddenly, her comedy career, the film itself and even the notion of a peaceful two-state solution all got upended by Hamas’ attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, and the Israeli state’s retaliation in Gaza. Ultimately, the result is a film left bereft, like Israel and Palestine themselves, with no easy conclusions or closure.
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Nevertheless, director Amber Fares succeeds in building a sympathetic portrait of bravery and character under pressure, as well as offering an all-too-rare picture of Israeli-Arab friendship struggling to survive in a political climate determined to separate and divide the two cultures at all costs.
A tall, zaftig beauty born to an Iranian-Jewish mother and an Ashkenazi Romanian father, Noam is practically a living embodiment of the melting pot ethic and cultural future Israel-Palestine once pinned its hopes on. When she was seven in the early 1990s, her idealistic left-wing parents moved the family to Neve Shalom, aka Wā?at as-Salām, aka the “Oasis of Peace,” a community made up of both Arab and Israeli families. Noam grew up bilingual in Arabic and Hebrew, best friends with an Arab girl, Ranin, in a community unlike any other in the country.
When the film catches up with her as an adult, Noam has arrived at Harvard University for a fellowship at the Divinity School, where she starts developing a one-woman show talking about Israeli-Palestinian politics as well as that evergreen topic for Jewish female comedians: her family’s efforts to make sure she finds a nice boyfriend.
Gifted with sharp comic timing and an appealing manner, Noam grows in popularity, especially once she returns to her homeland after the COVID pandemic sends émigrés homeward. Some of her routines go viral, including a bit about how Benjamin Netanyahu always brings dirty laundry with him for the White House to clean when he visits the United States. Her satirical song “Dubai, Dubai,” which she sings in perfect Arabic, also finds fame when it skewers the betrayal of the Palestinian cause by wealthy neighboring petrostates. And she gets a regular slot on a local TV program arguing gently with a more politically right male Israeli host. (Later, the filmmakers capture the host and Noam having a much more contentious argument about politics offscreen.) Noam’s live set builds a fan base, thanks to a strong current of self-deprecation; at one show, she reassures a mostly Arabic audience that her routine will only last seven minutes, not 70 years.
Of course, that all changes after Oct. 7, and the camera is compelled to spend less time watching Noam perform and more observing her looking horror-stricken, like the rest of us, as she watches the news unfold. But soon she’s back on her feet, attending protests against Netanyahu’s regime — although her position is often in opposition to some of the other marchers, who won’t go as far as Noam in their support of a two-state solution. As the camera listens in on these confrontations, as well as more intimate family ones where Noam differs with her family (her Aunt Zipi, like Aunt Zipis will, also turns on the Palestinian cause after the Hamas attack of Oct. 7), it becomes clear how lonely and challenging it is now for leftist Israelis still fighting for the ineffable dream of coexistence.
Experienced in news production for Al Jazeera and Rai, director Fares, who also made Netflix doc Speed Sisters, and her editor Rabab Haj Yahya demonstrate a crisp competence when it comes to keeping the story rolling along. The cuts are well-timed throughout, supportive of both the comic punchlines and the tragic gut punches. If the package ends up on a somewhat deflated, flat note of despair the fault lies more with history and probably deadline pressure to get the film finished for Sundance, missing out on the most recent hostage releases. But at heart, it’s a story that shows no clear ending yet, and Noam makes for a fine guide to this purgatory.
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