writing_womans_lives_symposium_paper_book_v2

These dynamics, in turn, speak to the political positions that Aya and Yaelle take within, and arrive
with to, the relationship, and to the conversation, which is held in Hebrew: whereas Aya is an Israeliborn
native Hebrew speaker who has been out as a lesbian for many years, 7 Yaelle’s story is more
complicated. Pursuing a relationship with a woman for the first time, Yaelle came out to herself, to us
audience, and to her parents, who did not accept their relationship, just recently. An immigrant from
France and new to Israel, 8 moreover, Yaelle learns to speak her first love vows to Aya in a new
language, the Hebrew, rather than in her, and many romances’ mother tongue, the French.
Cultivating these roles and intimacies by writing their lives on the screen through documentary
filmmaking, Aya and Yaelle share their lives with the audience using the cinematic apparatus, and
also, get a second chance to tell their story and rewrite it to the screen, in a more complex way. To
the spectator who watched Home is You after Please Love, some events seem out of place. Yet the
fact that one – or two – can tell a story in a different way, not only by selecting to film and screen
certain events, but also by re/dis/placing the same events differently, through editing, makes all the
difference. Here, the empowering competence to film and reframe events also means that Yaelle and
Aya are actually not alone in their privacy, however: for, the witnessing camera documents them and
shapes their images, as if playing the role of a third woman in their relationship. This is a woman
that, in certain moments Yaelle asks to shut down, saying: "I have nothing to say to the camera
anymore."
What does the realization of the desirable and conclusive marriage ceremony require? And if
couples in feminist film archives live happily ever after, how do we address the autobiography that,
in real life, ended in divorce? To learn more about the dynamics informing Aya and Yaelle’s
relationship while refraining from any speculations regarding what might be happening in their home
when the camera is off, we ask: how do the women decide on what to screen? What does the
camera itself, in turn, evoke within, and emanate from, their relationship? Finally, how does the
camera’s cinematic labor not only shape Aya’s and Yaelle’s appearances, but also reflect on the
political discursive conditions structuring their lived experiences? Let us take a detour through
several central scenes and try to explore these questions.
Please Love and Home is You end with the same wedding scene, but begin differently. Unlike the
harmonious codirected theater show, Please Love eludes to a conflict right as it starts: there, Aya
expresses her contempt about the relationship’s stagnation and desists that, in order for it to move
forward, Aya and Yaelle need to get married. On her part, Yaelle shares that she would not want to
get married and not have her parents attend the ceremony: we thus learn that Yaelle’s parents’
disapprove of the women’s romantic relationship. Seeking immediate resolution, Aya then suggests
that Yaelle confronts her parents' homophobia upright. Here, Aya’s demanding articulations move
the film forward, as it prefigures and heralds the film’s focal and recurring theme: that is, the closeup
shots showing Yaelle sobbing over the telephone when talking to her parents that live in France. “I
want to talk to dad,” “you never defend me,” “I need my parents but they’re not there because I’m
not what they want me to be,” Yaelle repeatedly cries to her mother from the other side of the line.
Screaming and screeching in French, Yaelle throws partial and broken sentences that blend with the
deluge of her countless touching tears, all creating an intricate and at times incoherent visual, verbal,
and vocal vernacular of pain. With Yaelle's dad unavailable, she only talks and cries to her mom.
In one line with Aya’s pleads, the close‐ups scenes enfold private moments of vulnerable
disclosure in front of our eyes: here, the production of authentic intimacy inevitably relies on the
extensive labors of mediations. While the telephone device connects Yaelle with her mother, her
mother speaks in the name of her disconnected father, who refuses to communicate with Yaelle.
Here, as in Avital Ronell’s theorization, “the telephone holds together what it separates. It creates a
space of asignifying and is tuned by the emergency feminine on the maternal core reissued.” 9 Indeed,
“the telephone was borne up by the invaginated structures of a mother’s deaf ear;” 10 yet the
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