As a tourist boat crosses the Bosporous, a man makes eye contact with a child. His mother protectively cradles the child to her. Tension builds, and the audience expectation may be that something will happen. Well it does, but the child is spared. Instead, the man turns out to be Eyal (Lior Ashkenazi), a Mossad agent skilled in assassination and the child’s father turns out to be the target dispatched by a lethal injection in broad daylight with his confused family looking on. Returning to Israel, Eyal is hailed a hero, but when he returns to his apartment, he discovers that his wife has had enough of his killing and committed suicide. Perhaps ironically, the agent has a genetic defect that rendered his tear ducts useless; simply put, he is unable to cry. Faced with despair and put on light duty because he refuses to seek counseling, Eyal is assigned to track down an aging Nazi war criminal. To accomplish this, he is assigned to play tour guide to the man’s grandson Axel (Knut Berger), who arrives in Israel to visit his sister Pia (Carolina Peters). Pia has severed ties with her family, and as a partial means of atoning for her family’s dicey past, lives on a kibbutz. Unhappy with the surveillance assignment, Eyal nonetheless serves as Axel’s guide and chauffer. As the pair travel around the countryside, they discuss everything from tastes in music to the Palestinian question. Axel is liberal and open-minded; Eyal is more closed and rigid. Nonetheless, a grudging admiration arises between the pair. Until Axel reveals something the audience has already gleaned – he’s gay. Macho Eyal cannot accept that (particularly since they shared a communal shower at the Dead Sea where Axel has tried to attempt the title of the film). Fed up, he asks to be relieved of the assignment, but his boss (Gideon Shemer) refuses. Eventually, Eyal must travel to Germany to complete the mission, where events take a strange turn. Fox and screenwriter Gal Uchovsky have crafted a very intriguing movie. It’s a sort of spin on THE ODD COUPLE, with both men finding his values and ideals challenged as they come to know one another better. Issues such as the visitation of the sins of the fathers on sons (or grandsons), homophobia, the Nazi legacy, and the plight of the Palestinians are touched on. There’s a plot twist that actually feels germane and not tacked on, although the same cannot be said of the film’s epilogue. Many in the audience at NewFest buzzed after the screening because the epilogue felt like something of a copout. While watching the film, there was a growing sexual tension between the two male leads, and one might have thought that the film would end more in line with Fox's YOSSI AND JAGGER. Instead, it veers into another direction that felt like a cheat. Rating: B MPAA rating: R for some language including sexual references, and for brief nudity Running time: 104 mins. |
| Walk on Water |
 |  |  |