SummaryBased on a true story, Yossi & Jagger portrays the love affair of two Israeli officers in a remote army base on the Israeli-Lebanese border. (Lama Productions)
SummaryBased on a true story, Yossi & Jagger portrays the love affair of two Israeli officers in a remote army base on the Israeli-Lebanese border. (Lama Productions)
If the situation has all the ingredients of a shrill, tearful melodrama, the filmmaker, working from a taut screenplay by Avner Bernheimer that doesn't waste a word or a gesture, keeps the emotional lid firmly in place.
Although director Eytan Fox focuses on Yossi and Jagger's specific situation, he also casts a critical eye on the responsibility military service puts on all young people who are still in the process of discovering themselves.
The film ambles along at a relaxed pace, well depicting the uneasy relationships among the soldiers and the mixture of boredom and danger that marks their daily existence.
It’s amazing what Yossi & Jagger does manage to relay in its brief time onscreen. And instead of melodrama and fireworks, the film goes the more difficult route of restraint and psychological tension.
A sprint when it should be a marathon, Yossi & Jagger crackles with promise, but much of it goes unrealized. Without the time or resources to develop its characters and overstuffed plot, the result feels like the Cliffs Notes for a longer, more satisfying film.