Yossi & Jagger (2002) – Gay Interest Film Review

Eytan Fox Directs an Israeli Military Gay Love Story

Jul 3, 2009

Eytan Fox directs the award winning Yossi & Jagger, an Israeli gay interest film that talks about life, war and regret, as well as what it means to truly love somebody.

Director Eytan Fox and writer Avner Bernheimer team up to create the sublime Hebrew language film Yossi & Jagger. This gay interest film is based on a true story of a tragic but incendiary love affair between two young soldiers stationed out on the desolate Israeli-Lebanese border, and is a film that hits like a mortar shell and makes its mark with heart-breaking but stunning effect.

Introverted company commander Yossi (the stoic but tender Ohad Knoller) and the uncommonly handsome unit leader Lior Amichai, nicknamed Jagger for his rockstar looks (the entrancing Yehuda Levi), have a secret. They are deeply in love. In the claustrophobic bunker in which their platoon sits, installed on a bleak hillside, keeping that secret, and finding time to be together, is almost impossible.

Both Yossi and Jagger are fighting for a cause they have little conviction for, and whilst Jagger is keen for a life after the army, a life of openness, Yossi clings to the rigid structure of the Israeli military. Impatient with this, Jagger starts up a quarrel the two men run out of time to mend. On the battlefield that night, one of them is fatally wounded, a tragedy made bitter-sweet as Yossi finds the courage to be open about his love.

Rather than simply relying on the central gay relationship to support the film, director Eytan Fox employs hand-held cameras, stark cinematography and many overpopulated scenes to demonstrate the claustrophobia that all the soldiers face. Yossi & Jagger comments on how conscription into the Israeli army effects not just the two central characters, but also those of differing religious convictions and the female soldiers in the company whom their General treats as his own property.

Yossi & Jagger also incorporates contemporary Israeli music in an intelligent way. Ivri Lider, an internationally renowned Israeli rock star (and also openly homosexual himself), is the backbone of the Yossi & Jagger soundtrack, performing a song Jagger serenades Yossi with in one frozen hill-side love scene called “Bo” (“Your Soul”), originally by equally famous Israeli star Rita. The song serves as a motif for Yossi and Jagger’s relationship and the profound change Jagger’s love causes in Yossi

Yossi & Jagger – A Profound Israeli Film on the Reality of Gay Love in the Middle East

There is something about Avner Bernheimer’s script that, in its original Hebrew, adds cadence to the spectacular performances that both Ohad Knoller and Yehuda Levi deliver in this independent gay film. The fact that Yossi & Jagger was not dubbed but rather subtitled for general release in itself speaks volumes of how each and every element in this very detail specific gay interest film is vital and well placed.

Yossi & Jagger, for all its budget restrictions, feels superior to counterparts like Brokeback Mountain. It lacks the grandness and the enormity of a Hollywood aided production, and for that reason it becomes a personal tale of two soldiers who embody epic themes, of lives stolen by warfare, chances at happiness wasted in fear and prejudice, and the hopeful possibility of redemption through being loved.

Yossi & Jagger is simply a beautiful, blistering hour of film, and is recommended for anyone interested in gay cinema or even foreign independent films, and also serves to inform of the thriving cultural power of the Israeli arts scene that continues to push boundaries in spite of the restrictions imposed upon it.

The copyright of the article Yossi & Jagger (2002) – Gay Interest Film Review in Middle Eastern Films is owned by Steve Williams. Permission to republish Yossi & Jagger (2002) – Gay Interest Film Review in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.