film spotlight
by chris carpenter
INTERNATIONAL GAY LOVE FROM EYTAN FOX IN SUBLET
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Niv Nissim stars as Tomer and John Benjamin Hickey stars as Michael in Eytan Fox’s Sublet. Photo by Daniel Miller
teven Spielberg, Chloe Zhao, Kelly Reichardt and Martin Scorsese. These are four of my picks of the top five filmmakers working today. The fifth is writer-director Eytan Fox. He is also the only gay
artist among this quintet. Fox was born in New York City but grew up in
Israel after his family emigrated there. He broke through internationally as a filmmaker in 2003 with Yossi & Jagger, a groundbreaking love story between two male Israeli soldiers. He followed it up with a moving 2012 sequel, simply titled Yossi. In between, Fox directed The Bubble, about a
group of friends in Tel Aviv and a young Palestin- ian who comes to live with them; the superb Walk on Water, in which a hunky Mossad agent tracks the gay grandson of a Nazi war criminal; and the delightful Cupcakes, a musical comedy about friends entering an international song contest. His films have won 28 international awards. Fox also developed the acclaimed Israeli television
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series Florentine, The Bar Mitzvah and Mary Lou. His latest production is Sublet, which will be
released Friday, June 11 in select US theatres. It will become available Friday, July 9 on VOD. The film follows Michael (played by current Tony Award nominee John Benjamin Hickey), a travel columnist for The New York Times. He flies to Tel Aviv to write an article about the destination pre- COVID, after he and his husband have suffered a personal tragedy. Michael is still grieving, so he just wants to do his research and return home. He sublets an apartment from a young film student, Tomer (sexy newcomer Niv Nissim). Michael gradually finds himself drawn into the life of the city with Tomer’s help. Superficially, the two men couldn’t be more different. Michael is surprised to find a city filled with fascinating contradictions and pulsing with life. But what really begins to turn things around for him is the unlikely and intense bond he forms with Tomer, which transforms both their lives in unexpected ways.
Fox’s trademark compassion, humor and visual flair illuminate Sublet, which is his first movie in several years. Why the delay? As Fox writes in the film’s press notes: “Besides the difficulties of making movies in the small Israeli film industry in which I work, it took me time to figure out who I was in the context of today’s quickly changing reality, and to express that as a filmmaker.” The release of his finished film was then delayed a year by the COVID-19 pandemic. He continues in the press notes, poignantly: “I’m 56 and probably never going to have biological children. In a very real way, however, my films are my children. They are conceived, nurtured, and eventually set free into the world with the hope that they will find their way there safely. In sending Sublet out into the world, I’m hoping that this story of men from two generations facing their demons and finding a way back to love from grief will strike a chord with people, the way Yossi & Jagger did many years ago. Maybe it too will change the world a little in the process.”
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