Review of "The Bubble"

The U.K. magazine Gay Times recently ran an article about the cultural atmosphere in the Israeli city of Tel Aviv. While the neighboring city of Jerusalem is known for its holy sites, the more secular city of Tel Aviv has become home to a burgeoning bohemian scene. According to the article, trendy cafés, bars, theater and the arts are thriving in Tel Aviv, and there's a growing acceptance of gays and lesbians.

This new hipster population lives in relative safety, free to live the kind of cosmopolitan existence they would in any other city. It's this seemingly carefree attitude (the city has been referred to as a "bubble" where the populace lives in denial of the violence that plagues their nation) that has led to criticism that the citizens of Tel Aviv don't care about what's happening in their own country.

Judging from The Bubble, a Romeo and Juliet-esque love story that serves as out director Eytan Fox's response to the criticism, the condemnation isn't entirely unjustified.

The film opens at a checkpoint on the Israeli-Palestinian border, where Noam (Ohad Knoller), an earnest young soldier for the Israeli Defense Force, is stationed. A bus from Palestine is unloaded, and each passenger is searched as the soldiers carry out their protocol with attitudes balanced precariously somewhere between apathy and open hostility. The passengers and soldiers eye one another, tensions simmering, threatening to turn what has been standard procedure into something decidedly deadlier.

It's a situation in which love seems unlikely to blossom, but blossom it does, as Noam catches the eye of an attractive young Arab named Ashraf (Yousef "Joe" Sweid). Sensing a connection, Ashraf takes a chance and follows Noam back to the apartment he shares with his roommates Yali (Alon Friedmann), the flamboyant owner of a local café, and Lulu (Daniela Wircer), an aspiring fashion designer, to deliver an ID that Noam had left behind.

The roommates decide to take Ashraf in, allowing him to stay temporarily in Tel Aviv, where his romance with Noam flourishes. The group absorbs him into their tightknit circle, procuring him a job as a waiter in Yali's café (forcing Yali to put aside his own thinly veiled jealousy of the new man in Noam's life) and taking him along to meetings of an activist group staging a "Rave for Peace" to protest the occupation. Being in Tel Aviv allows Ashraf the chance to live freely and openly, something he can't do when living with his traditionalist Palestinian family.

Director Eytan Fox's greatest strength lies in his depiction of the love and camaraderie that connects friends as well as lovers. It's a skill that served him well in his breakthrough film, Yossi and Jagger, a love story about two male IDF commanders, in which Fox was able to convey a relationship of real tenderness in a way that felt natural and real.

Here again, in a script written with longtime collaborator Gal Uchovsky, he's able to make us believe that this relationship between an Israeli and a Palestinian could work. In fact, he makes us want it to work.