Three young Israelis, two guys and a girl, share an apartment in Tel Aviv’s hippest neighborhood. As they try to put aside political conflicts and focus on their lives and loves, these progressive 20-somethings are often accused of living in an escapist “bubble”. Among them are three young Israeli flatmates: headstrong Lulu, who works in a bath products boutique, flamboyant Yali, who manages a trendy café, and brooding music store clerk Noam, who spends his weekends serving in the National Guard at checkpoints.
When Noam meets and falls in love with a young Palestinian man named Ashraf, the young Israelis decide to help Ashraf stay on in Tel Aviv illegally. They dress him in modern Israeli garb, give him a Hebrew name and put him to work in Yali’s café. They all decide to celebrate their peaceful coexistence at a beach party calling for an end to the occupation of Palestinian territories. But the young people’s utopia is shattered by the political and social realities of the Middle East.
Featuring songs by Ivri Lider (The Man I Love, Song to a Siren), Bright Eyes (First Day of My Life), Belle & Sebastian (Woman’s Realm), Keren Ann (Chelsea Burns, Sit in the Sun), Lloyd Cole (Music in a Foreign Language, On My Other Life), Nada Surf (Always Love), Tom McRae (Second Law), Le Tigre (On the Verge), Bebel Gilberto (All Around, Cada Beijo, Aganju), Acid House Kings (Tonight Is Forever), Palestinian Radio and Television Orchestra (Yahala).
The Bubble (Hebrew: הבועה HaBuah) is a 2006 romantic drama directed by Eytan Fox telling the story of two men who fall in love, one Israeli and one Palestinian. The title of the film refers to Tel Aviv, a relatively peaceful city in a tumultuous region and the setting of the film.
The Bubble might be the most personally important film that Eytan Fox has created. In telling about his experiences with coming out of the closet, he described the struggle he and his father experienced in reaching an understanding, which only truly was achieved around the time of filming this project. Very shortly after the film’s premiere, and after confessing his final understanding of his son, Eytan’s father died due to a heart attack.
About the Actors
Ohad Knoller (as Noam)
One of Israel’s best-known actors, Ohad Knoller is perhaps best known to international audiences for his role as Yossi in Eytan Fox’s 2002 film, Yossi & Jagger. The performance won him the Best Actor prize at the Tribeca Film Festival. An accomplished stage actor, Knoller made his screen debut in Eli Cohen’s 1994 film, Under The Domim Tree. He has also appeared in the Israeli TV series Ahava Ze Koev, Epidural, and Knafayim. He can currently be seen in Joseph Cedar’s feature film, Beaufort.
Yousef ‘Joe’ Sweid (as Ashraf)
Arab-Israeli actor Yousef Sweid made his feature film debut in Eytan Fox’s Walk on Water. Sweid currently stars in the Israeli soap opera Ha’Alfua, which has made him a household name. He also enjoyed acclaim in writerdirector Yael Ronen’s stage play, Plonter (Mess), about Palestinian life in occupied territories, presented to great success in Tel Aviv and abroad.
Daniela Wircer (as Lulu)
Daniela Wircer had to postpone her military service until she finished shooting her breakthrough performance in the 2001 Israeli soap opera Lechayey Ha’Ahava. She recently appeared in the TV series, Elvis, Rosental, Vehaisha Hamistorit. Eytan Fox’s The Bubble is her feature film debut.
Alon Friedmann (as Yali)
Alon Friedmann won the “Most Promising Newcomer” theatre award for his role as young writer Aaron in Yvegeny Ayre’s Shosha, adapted from Isaac Bashevis-Singer’s eponymous novel. He has also appeared in the hit TV series Ima’lle. Eytan Fox’s The Bubble is his feature film debut.
About the Filmmakers
Eytan Fox (Director – Writer)
Eytan Fox’s 2004 Walk on Water has become the most successful Israeli film abroad. The story of a Mossad secret service agent who befriends the gay grandson of an ex-Nazi officer was released successfully in over 25 countries. Previously, 2002’s Yossi & Jagger, the love affair between two officers in the Israeli army, became an international breakout hit. Walk on Water and Yossi & Jagger have achieved cult status on DVD.
Born in New York City, Fox moved with his family to Israel at an early age. He grew up in Jerusalem, then studied at Tel Aviv University School of Film and Television. His first film, Time Off, a 45-minute drama about sexual identity in the Israeli army, won him acclaim and led to the making of his first feature, Song of the Siren, a romantic comedy which became Israel’s biggest box office success in 1994.
Between 1997 and 2000, Fox created and directed the Israeli TV drama series Florentine, which examined the life of young people in Tel Aviv before and after the Rabin assassination.
Eytan Fox Filmography
2006 The Bubble (dir. Eytan Fox) Written by Eytan Fox and Gal Uchovsky, produced by Gal Uchovsky
2004 Walk on Water (dir. Eytan Fox) Written by Eytan Fox and Gal Uchovksy, produced by Gal Uchovsky
2002 Yossi & Jagger (dir. Eytan Fox) Produced by Gal Uchovsky
1997 Gotta Have Heart (dir. Eytan Fox) – musical short Written by Gal Uchovsky
1994 Song of the Siren (dir. Eytan Fox)
1990 Time Off (dir. Eytan Fox) – short
Gal Uchovsky (Writer – Producer)
Since the 1997 music short, Gotta Have Heart, writer-producer Gal Uchovsky has continued a successful artistic collaboration with writer-director Eytan Fox. They share writing credit on both The Bubble and Walk on Water, and Uchovsky has been a producer on Fox’s last three features, including Yossi & Jagger.
A leading commentator on Israeli arts and culture, Uchovsky writes a weekly column for “Time Out: Tel Aviv”, as well as rock music reviews. He served as a judge on the 2006 season of Israel’s Pop Idol.
Uchovsky has proven to be one of the most influential gay men in Israel. For over 20 years, he has been a vocal advocate of gay rights. As a journalist, he has often written or spoken about gay issues, making him a role model for many young people.
Bursting Some Bubbles: An interview with director Eytan Fox
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It’s not mission impossible to make an Israeli movie and show it all,” says Eytan Fox, the director of Yossi & Jagger and Walk on Water, about his latest film, The Bubble, which just opened in theaters throughout Israel.
The Bubble tells the story of a group of friends in Tel Aviv whose lives become complicated when one of them gets romantically involved with a young Palestinian. Discussing The Bubble over a glass of wine at the Paradiso Cafe in Jerusalem, Fox acknowledged the difficulties of making a film that mixes comedy and romance set in “the bubble” – the chic, insulated world of Tel Aviv’s Sheinkin Street cafes – with a serious look at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“With movies here, there’s usually a dichotomy. Either you make a funky urban comedy… or you make a very serious movie about the occupation,” he says. But the Tel Aviv-based filmmaker, who was born in New York and raised in Jerusalem, decided to make a movie that mirrored his own life and the lives of his friends.
He describes his daily routine of opening the newspaper and reading about violent clashes between Jews and Arabs not far from where he lives, then turning to the food column and “seeing a recipe for some fancy-shmancy thing with mangoes that I want to do and I read about a restaurant I want to go to and then about a movie. And this combination is what I wanted to show, which is fascinating and crazy and almost perverted. You know, people who come from abroad sometimes see the life in Tel Aviv and they say, ‘It’s so strange here, everything seems so normal.'”
It’s a contrast that is so much of a given that most Israelis rarely discuss it, just as Fox and I do not mention that in order to enter this caf , where tunes from Broadway musicals play in the background, we both had our briefcases examined for explosives by an armed guard.
He recalls attending a screening of his first feature film, Song of the Siren, that Jerusalem Cinematheque director Lia van Leer organized for representatives of Hadassah in the mid-’90s. Song of the Siren, an adaptation of the Irit Linur novel, took a humorous look at the love life of a female Tel Aviv advertising executive during the first Gulf War.
“I remember that some of them [the Hadassah women] really got upset in the screening and said, ‘Is this how you present the Israeli-Jewish woman, caring only about shopping?’ and stuff like that. I thought, ‘Okay, whatever, it’s funny,’ but Lia was saying, ‘What are you talking about? We have our lives, we have to maintain some kind of normality, we do just live and we do have families and love affairs and we do shop and enjoy shopping.’
“So I’ve been there, I’ve been there with Song of the Siren, which is more an escapist Tel Avivian romantic comedy, and I’ve done things that were more serious, like Yossi & Jagger, and to some extent, Walk on Water. And then you say, ‘I want to combine both.’
“It was difficult for some funds [film funds, organizations that provide financing for filmmakers here] to understand what I was trying to do. They would say, ‘How are you going to combine both?'” continues Fox, referring to an affectionate look at Tel Aviv and the Arab-Israeli conflict. “And I would say, ‘That’s just the point, that’s the movie.’ And eventually they did get it.”
IN SPITE OF his initial difficulty gaining support from some of the local film funds, on the whole, “it was easier to come to these funds and say I want to make a movie this time,” after the financial and critical success of Walk on Water, the story of a Mossad agent (played by Lior Ashkenazi, who has a cameo in The Bubble) assigned to guard the grandson of a notorious Nazi. Eventually, the Mossad agent finds that his perspective is changed by the friendship that develops between him and the young, gay German man and the German’s sister.
Walk on Water opened the prestigious Panorama section at the Berlin Film Festival in 2004, a first for an Israeli movie. In spite of its apparently uncommercial subject matter, Walk on Water went on to make more money worldwide than any Israeli movie in history, more than $7 million.
Fox, 41, who first became famous as the director of the television show Florentine, about 20-somethings in South Tel Aviv, has made a name for himself chronicling life both inside and outside “the bubble.” In Florentine, Fox, who is homosexual, pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable on Israeli television with a storyline that featured a kiss between two male characters. He co-wrote The Bubble with Gal Uchovsky, his personal and professional partner for the past 18 years.
Fox’s films often deal with the problems of gays in Israel, such as the love affair between two male IDF soldiers in Yossi & Jagger. Although initially intended as a television drama, the film was shown in Israeli theaters and attracted such a following that eventually it was distributed overseas. In 2003, Yossi & Jagger star Ohad Knoller (who also appears in The Bubble) won the Best Actor Prize at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York.
“I made The Bubble relatively fast after Walk on Water,” Fox says. Although there is a subplot in Walk on Water involving an Arab character (played by Yousef “Joe” Sweid, who also plays the pivotal character of Ashraf, the Palestinian lover, in The Bubble), Fox decided that this time, he wanted to confront the Israeli-Palestinian conflict “head-on.”
He credits his awareness of the conflict and his ability to dramatize it both here and abroad to his American mother, who died while he was making Walk on Water.
“Walk on Water was dedicated to my mother,” he says. She was also the inspiration for the character of Noam’s mother in The Bubble, who appears in flashbacks. Like Fox’s mother, Noam’s mother is a community activist in Jerusalem’s French Hill neighborhood and organizes a protest when a sign is posted in the local playground saying that Arab children are not welcome there.
After his mother’s death, Fox and his siblings visited Isawiya, the Arab village just a few minutes’ walk from French Hill, and started a project in their mother’s name to improve living conditions there. Fox became fascinated by the lack of contact between the residents of French Hill and Isawiya villagers and thought, “This is going to be my next movie,” he recalls.
He chose not to set the film in Jerusalem, though, because, “I live in Tel Aviv and I really have very little to do with the conflict and fighting for Palestinians. In my movies I try to deal with all kinds of issues that relate to [the conflict] but then again, I have my very pampered life in Tel Aviv… I didn’t want to be a hypocrite.”
Several extended sequences in the film take place in Nablus and were filmed in an Arab village. Fox says that actor Yousef Sweid, “helped a lot” by explaining what aspects of the script might antagonize local residents.
Fox finds comfort in the fact that Sweid, who appears on the Israeli television soap opera, Ha’alufa, has become a teen idol.
“Girls love him,” he says. “There just wouldn’t have been an Arab teen idol when I was a kid.”
In spite of some of the more tragic plot turns in The Bubble, Fox is gratified that, “A few people have told me, ‘The film gives you some kind of hope,'” he says, just before he hops into his car to face the traffic on the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway.
— By Hannah Brown, The Jerusalem Post, July 6, 2006.
The Bubble (2007)
Directed by: Eytan Fox
Starring: Ohad Knoller, Alon Friedman, Daniela Virtzer, Yousef ‘Joe’ Sweid, Miki Kam, Shredi Jabarin, Lior Ashkenazi, Zion Barouch, Oded Leopold, Dorin Munir, Zohar Liba, Yael Zafrir, Yotam Ishay, Avital Barak
Screenplay by: Eytan Fox, Gal Uchowski
Production Design by: Oren Dar, Ido Dolev
Cinematography by: Yaron Scharf
Costume Design by: Oren Dar
Music by: Ivri Lider
MPAA Rating: R for some language.
Distributed by: Strand Releasing
Release Date: September 7, 2007
Visits: 72
