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Interview with Walk On Water’s Eytan Fox and Gal Uchovsky
by Joel Dossi,
March 8, 2005
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Israeli
director Eytan Fox and Gal Uchovsky, his producer and life
partner, have made some of Israel’s most thought-provoking films,
including Yossi & Jagger, which remained on the New York
Time’s recommended list for over a month.
While
the openly gay couple’s partnership isn’t secret, it’s not widely
publicized, either. At the Toronto Film Festival last fall, Fox
told AfterElton.com, “We usually don’t give interviews together.”
Uchovsky
politely followed with, “We don’t want to give the image of the
royal couple. We were also afraid that it would make people think
Walk On Water was a 'gay film'
and they wouldn’t want to go see it.”
That
“gay film,” opens in limited release on March 4, and it’s one of
their most personal--and politically charged--works.
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The film
centers on Eyal, who’s a hit man for the Mossad, Israel’s version of the
CIA. His mission is to assassinate an ex-Nazi officer, who might still
be alive. Pretending
to be a tourist guide, he befriends the Nazi’s gay-grandson, Axel, who
is visiting his sister in Tel Aviv. Together, they set out on an extended
tour of Israel, and experience many of Israel’s political ideologies first
hand. Axel’s frank and open attitudes challenge Eyal’s rigid, clichéd
values, while a loving bond develops.
AE: Can
you tell us a little about yourself?
EF: My family moved to Israel when I was 3 years old, but my
parents created a very American family for me. They started shipping cans
of white tuna fish over because they didn’t have any in Israel, and pop-tarts.
So we had whatever we needed as kids. We
went back and forth to the US a lot. I was in the Army in Israel, and
I studied in Tel Aviv.
AE: Homosexuality
and the military seem to be major themes in your work.
EF: My experiences in the Israeli Army and with Israeli men
brought me to most of my movies. I
grew up being surrounded by “macho” men, and this culture of strong, forceful
and straight – or supposedly straight – males. That’s the culture. But
it ended up being very strict and very heavy on our shoulders.
AE: But
in Walk On Water, you have a very important, German character.
EF: Axel. At first, the character arc for Axel wasn’t significant,
or substantial. As an Israeli, I found myself tending more to the Israeli
characters. Then
someone asked what is happening to Axel. Axel just can’t meet the character
of Eyal, a Mossad officer, and not have anything happening to him. This
goodie-goodie, GreenPeace, politically correct German has to have some
bad feelings, some anger: hatred for his parents, his father or his grandfather.
AE: Do you relate at all to Axel?
EF: I don’t know what I would do if I had a grandfather who
was a Nazi and was dying. I don’t know if I would just say, ‘die, I don’t
care’ or would I say, ‘I won’t be part of your life.’ I don’t know.
AE: Eyal
and Axel develop a unique and loving relationship.
EF: Axel, the gay man, helps Eyal become a better straight man.
One
of my producers, the one who’s straight, pointed that out to me. He said,
‘What’s amazing about this film is that a straight man has to meet a gay
man in order to become a better person.’ That
was an amazing concept for me, too.
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