October 11-18, 2007
Atlanta, Georgia

• Attendance
• Opening Night
• The Films
• Projection Problems
• Closing Night
• Awards

by Jay Blodgett

  Opening Night

Out on Film's Opening Night was co-sponsored by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and by the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival, which appears to be exceptionally organized, in that, although it is nearly four months away, the AJFF had special postcards already printed to attract the GLBT audience. (It was a parody poster of Brokeback Mountain called "Brokeback Mt. Sinai" -- very cute!)

This was appropriately matched to the opening night film, THE BUBBLE (dir. Eytan Fox, Israel, 2006, 115 mins.) Eytan Fox also directed YOSSI & JAGGER (which created quite the stir by inciting an onstage protest at the SF LGBT Film Festival in 2003!).

In The Bubble, he again mixes politics and sex and romance as a relationship develops between a Jewish national guardsman and a Palestinian man. Things get even more political as the guardsman's roommates (a gay man and a straight woman) are involved with an anti-settlement movement.

Oh, and then there is the Palestinian family, who is preparing for his sister's wedding and planning a marriage for him. There are also more characters, as far as the roommates love interests are concerned, too. The point I am driving at is that there are a LOT of subplots going on here. It is scripted and performed with enough skill that this miasma of sexual-political-romantic plotting doesn't become burdensome, until the lengthy parallel climaxes and denouements.

That said, the film features some exceptionally edgy scenes, both sexually and breathtakingly politically confrontational, especially for a film that was produced with government money! The cast is beautiful. Each and every one of them. In fact, one of the roommates' paramours made the audience gasp on his entrance! ("Shalom!" gulp!) The cinematography is hand held, yet steady enough not to be nauseating and the editing is particularly clever at points. Considering the bleakness of the subject matter, the film retained a great deal of heart and hope within it.

However, there was a certain amount of debate regarding the protagonist's motive in the final scene. As the numerous plots wrap up, I found myself emotionally distancing, or literally wrapping up also, so that by the time it reached the big finish, I found myself a bit confused, if not put off by that final act. (I hate being this vague, but I do NOT want to give away a spoiler!)

Though I enjoyed the film and admire it more for what it does, I can not say I loved it since it became a bit of work for me to get to the end, and beyond.

After the film, The Independent was the host of some party munchies on the balcony overlooking the theatre entrance, where much networking was done. An internet television show interviewed SSR editor Pam Cole and I, and we got the idea to start podcasting since we had a bit of an entertaining on-camera debate about the ending to The Bubble. Stay tuned....

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