Mike Mosallam’s BREAKING FAST at BENTONVILLE Film Festival REVIEW; described as My Big Slim Middle-Eastern Gay Non-Wedding – and that’s just fine
Mike Mosallam’s BREAKING FAST at BENTONVILLE Film Festival REVIEW; described as My Big Slim Middle-Eastern Gay Non-Wedding – and that’s just fine
Gay Muslim romantic dramedies aren’t exactly an omnipresent subgenre, so it’s tough to directly compare Mike Mosallam’s Breaking Fast with any other movies. But at least initially, this film might make you think you can.
Opening with dictionary definitions of Ramadan and Iftar, and proceeding with a cheesy opening montage of food purchasing set to a generic pop-sounding song, this looks like the beginning of every major by-the-numbers wacky comedy ever.
But you’re being set up.
What looks initially like the start of a typical family farce, with bickering relatives home for the holiday feast – Iftar, the sundown breaking of Ramadan fasts — turns into something else entirely. Behind closed doors, harried doctor Mo (Killing Jesus‘ own Christ, Haaz Sleiman) finds out that secret boyfriend Hassan (The Flash‘s Patrick Sabongui) is so terrified of his traditionalist father’s wrath that he plans to enter a sham marriage with a woman just to avoid being shunned.
He’s cool with staying on the down-low, but that’s a no-go for Mo.
A year abruptly elapses in a cut, with Mo now romantically solo, but besties with the far more flamboyant Sam (Good Trouble‘s Amin El Gamal), whose particular relationship with Islam remains cultural, but spiritual only in the loosest possible sense. The fact that his birthday coincides with the beginning of Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting, and this West Hollywood kid picks partying over prophecy, basically says it all.
At the party, Mo meets Kal (Michael Cassidy) an aspiring actor named after Superman, which is Mo’s favorite movie. (And a casting in-joke, as Cassidy played Grant Gabriel on Smallville and Jimmy Olsen in Batman V Superman.) Kal can speak Arabic, thanks to a military childhood in Jordan, and is as much of a tee-totaller as any good Muslim. But Ramadan has just begun, and in addition to fasting, impure thoughts are a big no-no. So after a couple of weird non-rejection moments, the two start hanging out as friends for evening Iftar, since Kal also happens to know how to cook several Middle-Eastern dishes.
Rom-com tropes happen, as they inevitably must. Mo and Kal learn secrets about each other that they wish they had been told sooner, and Hassan the ex eventually comes back into the picture. Where Breaking Fast goes deeper is in the roots of the character conflict being so culturally specific. Mo assumes his own liberal take on Islam is the only right one, and homophobia in the religion merely an aspect of colonialism. Kal has his own family issues that make trusting hard. When they and their comic-relief best friends fight, they’re pulling at resilient weeds that have bedeviled far more patient cultivators.
Writer-director Mosallam, creator of the reality show All-American Muslim, in expanding his own short film of the same name, has put a wealth of talent in front of the character. Virtually every actor of Middle-Eastern heritage onscreen has a long list of significant credits…and probably still an unfamiliar name. That the lone lead white guy is the aspiring actor with no back-up plans and utter confidence in his success probably adds additional baggage to Kal, as far as the target audience is concerned.
However, this is still primarily, if not entirely, a comedy, and we’re not going to solve World Peace here – just household harmony, at best.
At times, when Mo’s wacky family appear, it briefly verges on My Big Slim Middle-Eastern Gay Non-Wedding. (Nobody here is remotely fat, what with all the fasting and West Hollywood fitness scene.)
The wedding part, obviously, would be the sequel. And since this does adhere to rom-com tropes which matter, one can’t really call that a spoiler.
Mike Mosallam’s BREAKING FAST at BENTONVILLE Film Festival REVIEW; described as My Big Slim Middle-Eastern Gay Non-Wedding – and that’s just fine