"The Bubble" of Doomed Love in Tel Aviv

We watched a film with a few surprises in it tonight. Again, I get the ‘oh Max’ groan, after choosing an unknown Netflix film that just happened to contain homosexual sex. Well, I do admit I wanted one scene with these two men in bed to end faster than it did, but “The Bubble” was an emotional film by director Eytan Fox that gripped us to the end.

Set in Tel Aviv, it tells the story of a group of housemates and lovers in today’s tense and bomb-filled Israel. Noam is a record store clerk who falls in love with a Palestinian named Ashraf after a chance encounter at a checkpoint. It’s a believable love, credible and true despite the terrible things these two peoples do to one another. But that’s politics, as another housemate often says when the conversation swerves into this uncomfortable place.

Lulu is the sexy Elaine in this group of Tel Aviv Seinfeldians, who finally relents and lets a cad have his way with her, only to never get called again. She tracks him down at his magazine office with her buds and tells him off. This error causes their illegal friend legal trouble when the lout later shows up at the cafe where he works–he can spot his true identity by the shorts he is wearing. He flees back to the bomb-cratered territories for his sister’s wedding.

The group organizes a rave against the war, dropping X and dancing on a beach. When Noam and Lulu cross into the West Bank with fake TV reporter credentials, to try to find Ashraf, he is mistakenly outed with a wayward smooch, peeked in on by Jihad, who is not exactly gay friendly. Later Jihad’s wife is shot by Israeli soldiers rampaging through the streets, and voila! another suicide bomber is born.

Life is difficult for these star-crossed lovers. They simply want to be together and find that bustling Tel Aviv, where people need permits to work, and the Jews fear their neighbors will bomb them, makes it awfully hard.