We are not real. We are but...PAPER DOLLS

By Bill Harrison

With their gay lifestyles rejected by their Philippines homeland and merely tolerated in Israel, the team often lurch between despair and glamour in their search for true acceptance ­ even of themselves by themselves.

Numbering 135 features, the DOCNZ International Documentary Film Festival will continue its kiwi-based showcase until October. This is the largest collection of outstanding documentaries altogether. Never before has the Southern Hemisphere hosted such a celluloid summit. So much quality all at the same place same time.

Prime among them is Paper Dolls, centred on a cluster of compassionate though flamboyant Filipino transexuals. Caregivers and stage-show artists, the troupe is in search of just about everything invisible to the human eye.

Within the film's two hour-approximate duration, Tomer Heymann, Israeli Director, encompasses wide angles on acceptance, rejection, and reinvigoration.

In a natural conversational style, Heymann's canvas is a chapter in the lives of Cheska, Chiqui, Giorgio, Jan and Sally, migrant care attendants to Israel's frail aged.

With a backdrop often of only home and nightclub, Heymann enlivens a sample of almost everything they underwent during their seven years in orthodox Bnei Brak, suburban Tel Aviv.

With their gay lifestyles rejected by their Philippines homeland and merely tolerated in Israel, the team often lurch between despair and glamour in their search for true acceptance ­ even of themselves by themselves.

Their best platform is their nightclub appearances as the Paper Dolls, a troupe of female impressionists aged late 20's to early 40's.

Song verses often tellingly over-voice, saying much more than the script. We are not real. We are but Paper Dolls. When the sky closes in and we are alone once more.

The films manoeuvre between first second and third stages. Skilfully, viewers are relayed the full impact of this only in the film's closing sequence.

Highlights of these transitions include: Strong bonds between the caregivers and their charges. Prominent among them is Haim Amir, the wordless though rampantly sociable 89-year-old. Dapper and white-haired, Haim remains fully mobile till his surrender to bronchial cancer.

The split-second glory of the dolls while on stage. Hauntingly this seems the only venue they are real despite the conviction of their pony-tailed or bob hairstyles, curvaceous hips and eyes which hint a thousand unsung ballads.

The dolls eventual rejection as mere amateurs by the citys top nightclub.

Ironically it is as if they cannot succeed even at their main flaw. Ashen at such a final spurn, the cadre of half-man half woman beings falls to fragmentation weeks later. Some return home to a life of near ­ scorn while others stay and one ventures to London. Underscoring, is how their quest for the mainstream seems somehow pinioned on something external or so far away. Yet, it is as close as their own genealogy, Tomer Heymann features closely in the movie as the group's confidante also showing flashes of authority as their occasional advocate. Sil-houetted throughout is his own apparent search for sexual identity.

At first the dolls seem a madcap cluster, but Hey-mann eases forth the solid core of each.

There is Chiqui forever experimenting with eye make-up to highlight already luminous such bulbs.

Then Sally, independent and analytical, yet surprisingly accepting of others suggestions.

Vitally, Giorgio, the gaunt man of contrasts. Perhaps the only handsome one among his prettier companions.

A loner, yet sometimes a leader. Someone who opts his own shiny locks into a sensible ponytail. Yet in his salon, creates for clients, styles breathtaking in their imagery.

Heymann the young director farewells Jan as she departs Ben Gurion Airport for the Philippines in the film¹s closing moments. Glinting briefly up against a glass panel, Jan waves before vanishing on an upward escalator.

Heymann's departing words unwittingly hold the Paper Dolls only real

By Bill Harrison
Pinoy.net.nz reporter