Only Human

Ever since the days of the Montagues and the Capulets, it seems that people who are suppose to stay apart keep falling in love. For Romeo and Juliet, this ended in tragedy. But such stories can also be treated as comedy, and often are set up through that dreadful experience of meeting the loved one’s parents, as in the films Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner or Meeting the Parents.

Only Human is the latest entry in this field. Leni is bringing her fiancé Rafi home to meet her family. Like all families, it has its eccentricities. (Well, this family may have a few more than most.) Leni’s mother Gloria is a typical Jewish mother. Her younger sister Tania is sex crazed. Tania’s four-year-old daughter walks around with a pillow in her clothes to pretend she’s pregnant. Her brother has suddenly discovered his Jewish roots and is trying to bring the non-observant home in line with Orthodox practices.

Rafi, of course, is under the microscope and is trying to please all his future in-laws. He seems to be doing very well, until it is discovered that Rafi is a Palestinian. As Gloria puts it, “Jews kill Palestinians. Palestinians kill Jews. You’ll kill each other.� It doesn’t matter that they all live in Spain. Jews and Palestinians aren’t supposed to get along nearly as well as Leni and Rafi do.

The husband and wife team of Dominic Harari and Teresa De Pelegrí, who wrote and directed the film, say, “The big issue of our times is how to avoid killing the person we’re supposed to co-exist with.� In Only Human that includes not only these two lovers from different backgrounds, but also all the other relationships in the family. Harari and De Pelegrí go on to say, “Family for us is a form of masochism, simultaneous pain and pleasure, a source of intense happiness that really makes you suffer.�

As serious as all this may sound, this is a lighthearted film that plays with that combination of happiness and suffering. In the midst of the uproar of the discovery that Rafi is Palestinian, he makes a strategic retreat to help in the kitchen. But in the process he drops a container of frozen soup out the window that falls to the sidewalk and strikes someone. What’s worse, it may be Leni’s father. In his effort to make a good impression, has he killed his future father-in-law, proving the charge that Palestinians kill Jews?

As the evening continues on, the various relationships are examined as Rafi’s nationality is discovered by other family members or as they deal with the father’s late arrival home (which Leni and Rafi think is because he is dead.)

Only Human doesn’t concern itself with the politics of the Israel/Palestine conflict or the issue of immigration that is a key issue in both Europe and the US. Rather, it boils the issues down to the personal relations of Rafi and his future family.

The film uses comedy to help us see the way we get along with the people we love is the same way we can learn to get along with people who are different. The bond that holds all the relationships in the film together is love -- that love that the filmmakers have called a form of masochism. Yet with all the tensions of family, that bond of love unites them. Will that bond bring us together with others in our world if we recognize them as our family?