‘Like Me’ Review: Unlikely Story
metroweekly.comLike Me (★★☆☆☆) makes broad, swift swings between emotional highs and lows.In short order, Tom, portrayed by newcomer Yoav Keren, bounces from a threesome with a handsome gay couple, to being informed by his widower dad Gideon (Danny Geva) that, based on some tell-tale queerness Gideon found on the kid’s phone, he’s giving Tom two weeks to get out of the house.Writer-director Eyal Kantor’s feature debut treads credible ground depicting Tom’s confusion as he processes being rejected by his emotionally distant dad.
He still parties when he can with straight bestie Gilad (Mendi Barsheshet) and Gilad’s new Instagram-influencer girlfriend Noa (Roni Adler), but the hurt and anger seething beneath the smiles can surface when he least expects.During a photo shoot, Rami (Gal Amitai), a smitten photographer twice Tom’s age, directs model Tom to pour that pain out, resulting in the most persuasively raw moments of Keren’s performance.
Elsewhere, the actor appears in need of stronger direction to convey Tom’s complex, sometimes contradictory actions and urges.Especially when those actions seem contradictory to common sense and reality, like when Tom intentionally trashes his bike, to create an excuse for running late on his Pizza Hut deliveries.Sure, to embellish the fib, he lets the bike fall onto the pavement, where he tosses a handful of dirt over it and on his clothes and face.
But he also violently kicks and stomps on the bike, his main mode of transportation throughout the rest of the movie’s shaky handheld shots of him biking the city streets.Tom saves his tip, but the moment, rather than coming across as a clever payoff, points to the same awkward direction that continually centers Tom’s ungainly dancing as seductive or.
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