The Bubble

“A film too relevant to be ghettoized as just another gay movie, this superb new drama from the American-born, Israeli-based director Eytan Fox (Yossi & Jagger, Walk on Water) begins with a young Palestinian named Ashraf (Yousef Sweid) showing up at the Tel Aviv apartment of Noam (Ohad Knoller), an Israeli reservist with whom he locked eyes at a military checkpoint. They hit it off immediately (“So that’s how Jews kiss,” Ashraf says), and soon Noam and his friends are disguising Ashraf as an Israeli so that the two men can stay together. The first half of THE BUBBLE takes place in a Westernized, hipster district of Tel Aviv, where Noam and his friends protest for peace in the afternoon and go to raves at night. When Ashraf must rush home to Gaza, it becomes Noam’s turn to take on a disguise and cross into hostile territory. This split structure allows Fox to take us deep inside two worlds rarely seen on Western movie screens — places where a person’s attempt to resolve issues of family and sexuality and love don’t stand a chance against outside pressures that are ceaseless and dizzying in their complexity. As one young lover says to another, “If only we could make the politics disappear.” (Chuck Wilson, L.A. Weekly)