Acting Serious, Living Rationally, Thinking Gay
Currently appearing in As You Like It at the White Bear Theatre, London











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Martin Foreman
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The Bubble
 (Ha-Buah) released Israel 2006, US 2007
January 2010: Lulu (female, straight), Noam and Yali (male and gay) are twenty-something flatmates / roommates in Sheinkin Street in Tel Aviv - a "Bubble" of young, Bohemian and pacifist life in a country accustomed to decades of war and violence. Lulu is beginning an affair with the hunk who edits Time Out Tel Aviv; Yali is attracted to a macho ex-soldier and Noam is smitten by Ashraf, a Palestinian without papers who turns up at their door.

The paths of true love do not run smooth. The hunk is unreliable and the ex-soldier is openly gay but irritatingly right-wing. But life gets considerably more difficult when Ashraf has to return to Nablus to avoid arrest by the Israeli authorities; soon afterwards his future brother-in-law, a leader in Hamas, discovers he is gay. For all four, already involved in the anti-war movement, the personal becomes increasingly political.

An intelligent, moving drama, The Bubble adeptly mixes romance, humour and the realities of life for Palestinians under the occupation and for young Israelis who - mostly - live far from the battlefield. Written / directed / produced by Eytan Fox and Gal Uchovsky, the gay couple who made Yossi and Jagger (2002) about two Israeli soldiers in love, The Bubble covers much more emotional and political territory than their earlier effort and does so with much greater depth and sophistication.

Not surprisingly, the film won a number of awards at gay and other film festivals, but it was not widely distributed and reviewed, reflecting the fact that the Hollywood system dominates the English-speaking world and the average film-goer is turned-off by subtitles. A pity, given that The Bubble deserved to be seen by as least as many people as Brokeback Mountain, the 2005 film which, still, regrettably, is seen as the most important gay-themed film of the noughties. You can buy it from Amazon.com / .co.uk (see column left).

marks out of 10:     social interest: 8     gay interest: 9     film quality: 8
IMDb entry      wikipedia



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