The boys in The Bubble: here's the pitch: two men--one Israeli, one Palestinian--fall in love. The backdrop is an insulated bohemia surrounded by one of the worlds most war-torn regions. in his latest film, director Eytan Fox takes us inside the bubble that is Tel Aviv.

Noam, the lead character in Eytan Fox's controversial new drama The Bubble, is an out gay man who swoons to Jeff Buckley, watches too many reality shows, and dates a man bis wary roommates disapprove of. Sounds like your typical Chelsea gay guy, only Noam is a Jew living in Tel Aviv, and bis new beau, Ashraf, is a Palestinian Arab. The lovers are star-crossed from the start, and it's no surprise that each young man struggles for some semblance of inner peace after a lifetime of fierce religious conflict between their cultures.

"I think young people in Israel are really sick and tired about living the way we've been living for so many years," insists Fox, who first gained international notice with the gay romance Yossi & Jagger. "They're expressing themselves in different ways, saying we don't want to live this way anymore and we won't live this way anymore."

The film takes its name from the derisive term many Israelis apply to such an optimistic outlook, branding any attempt to live a life shielded from conflict as a form of denial. "A lot of people in Israel hate Tel Aviv," says Yousef "Joe" Sweid, who plays the Palestinian character Ashraf. "They think that people in Tel Aviv live in 'the bubble,' that they are only thinking about peace and they are not thinking about the real world.

"In Tel Aviv everyone is very open," continues the Haifa-born Sweid, who moved to Tel Aviv with his Christian Arab family at age 19. "For me, coming to live here was quite a shock, and for Ashraf, it's very odd. I felt like him, with this changing of worlds. He comes from this family where he can't say that he's gay, so to see the sexual freedom in Tel Aviv, the drugs, the parties, the getting drunk--for him, it is a symbol of freedom."

Though Israel has lately grown far more gay-friendly (thanks in part to Fox, whose 1997 television show Florentine opened eyes with its groundbreaking gay characters), Fox says that level of tolerance is rarely shown to other religions. "There's one famous story that reached the high courts about this Jewish guy living in Jerusalem who had an Arab Palestinian lover that the government wanted to deport and send back to Palestine," Fox says. "And the Palestinian said, 'If you do this, just for being gay, I will be murdered or tortured. And sleeping with the enemy, that's even worse: I'm not only gay, I'm sleeping with a Jewish man.'"

Fox learned his own lesson over 20 years ago, when he became attracted to a Palestinian man while enlisted in the army. "I was in therapy at the time, and I came to my shrink and I said, 'Listen, I'm in love. I'm in love with this beautiful Arab called Sharif,'" Fox says, laughing. "And she said to me--she was terrible, in any case--she said to me, "You're crazy. You're doing something terrible: You're letting yourself become involved with a Palestinian, which will of course lead to nothing because you cannot be together with a Palestinian. It's impossible!'

"I said, 'You're crazy, you're old-school, you don't know anything! We're young--we can be together,' kind of romantic and naive. I hardly knew this man; it was not going to become a big love story. But young people can do these things and do not think that they are impossible."

Actor Ohad Knoller, who plays the Israeli character Noam, agrees. "When I was 20 years old, the same age as Noam, I was living in an apartment in Tel Aviv on Sheinkin Street, the same street as in the film, and I had one roommate who was gay and a second roommate who was a girl, like in the film. In a lot of ways this is a story about me."

Still, according to his director, Knoller had to wrestle with the same notions of masculinity that Fox questions in his films. "From bis father and from the education he got, he has within him this concept of a traditional macho Israeli man," says Fox, who previously directed Knoller in Yossi & Jagger, a same-sex love story set against the backdrop of the Israeli military. "Ohad insists on going to reserve duty every year. Israeli men, until the age of 50, have to go for one month every year, but I and my circle of artists don't really do that; we find ways around it. It's crazy, of course, but he has this thing where he wants to be the good guy and do the right thing."

That old-fashioned upbringing caused Knoller to grow uncomfortable while shooting The Bubble's first rooffop sex scene. "I was all offended as a gay man and a director by the fact that be was finding it so difficult to perform," says Fox. "I myself was struggling with my reaction, because I'm crazy. I was upset; I wasn't going to talk to him anymore. It was really a childish reaction, which reminds me maybe of the little gay boy in me being insulted by bis straight friend."

During a break in the shooting schedule, Fox took Knoller to lunch to work out bis issues. "I started talking to him, and he actually started crying when he realized what he had done up there and how he had offended me," says Fox, who found that Knoller was still grappling with the notoriety he'd received for bis gay role in Yossi & Jagger. "On those once-a-year times in the reserves, bis fellow army dudes on the one hand admire him for being this celebrity, but also make fun of him, saying jokes 'Don't shower with Ohad. Be careful about your backside.' And then bis father found it hard to deal with, and bis father is this old-fashioned Israeli man. Stuff like that, he never told me about."

"[Eytan] helped me see the sex scenes in this film as art, as part of an artistic creation," says Knoller, though he wryly adds, "I think acting is one of the only professions in the world where your boss can tell you to get rid of your clothes and get into bed with someone and, if you don't, you're fired!"

To hear Fox tell it, that lunch loosened Knoller up considerably. "We went to shoot the second sex scene, and it was almost like I had to stop him from being all over Yousef!" laughs Fox. "I said, 'Ohad, a little slower--you don't have to pump so fast!' He was kissing and doing all these things and being completely in the scene in a loving, connected way. For me, it was interesting that as an actor, you can work through these problems and reach a place where people can be anything and explore different sides of their personality."

For Sweid, the sex scenes presented no such problems. He says, "At the audition, it was my first time kissing a man, and I did it even though Eytan said, "You don't have to kiss.' But I just decided to do it, and I didn't give a damn. It wasn't hard for me."

Sweid already enjoys bis reputation as a groundbreaking actor in Israel. He's a puppeteer for an Arab character on Sesame Stories, the Israeli edition of the Sesame Street franchise ("Oh, it's so much fun!" he giggles), and he has become an unlikely Israeli pinup thanks to bis role as a soccer star on the popular soap opera Ha'alufa (The Champion). Sweid shrugs the role off as just another job, but Fox thinks there's more to it.

"When I was a kid, the idea of a young girl---or boy, in my case--hanging up a poster of an Arab actor was unheard of," Fox notes. The fact that all these young girls admire him and drool on bis pictures is crazy to me!"

Still, despite Sweid's fervent following and Fox's reputation as one of Israel's top filmmakers, The Bubble faced a tough reception when it opened there last year (in advance of its limited American release on September 7). "Ten days [after the film's release], the second war in Lebanon broke out, and movie houses started shutting down their doors," says Fox. "The atmosphere was terrible, and people were not going to see movies in the city. But also, since it was a war, there was a right-wing backlash and people started becoming very nationalistic. There was one article in a newspaper that was actually like, 'OK, we know you do these things, but why do we have to see them on the screen?' In a legitimate newspaper!"

Though such a criticism might be construed as a step backward, Knoller is hopeful that Israeli tolerance will grow in the near future. "I think that even if you can't resolve anything, you have to try," says Knoller. "I hope that in our generation or even the generation after ours, people will try to do things to have peace in our area."

Fox feels a change is already on the way. One of his "proudest moments" was when a respected Israeli army officer likened bis feelings to those of Yossi and Jagger when describing how he and another policeman helped oversee a withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.

"He used this image of two gay lovers to describe an intimate moment between him and another man," beams Fox. "I don't want to sound like I'm bragging, but this is proof of change! This is proof that you've changed something, that you've made people less fearful in Israel."

Buchanan is The Advocate's film critic.

The truth about Tel Aviv

The Bubble portrays the Mediterranean city as a mecca for cultural, political, and religious tolerance. Time Out Tel Aviv editor Itai Valdman separates fact from fantasy

IN THE FIRST TWO MONTHS of my army service, I got a hard-on every time I walked into the common showers. Imagine an 18-year-old gay boy from a small town in northern Israel suddenly surrounded by 50 naked young guys.

I was, of course, still deep in the closet (I would come out two years later in 1999 during my officer course). The only things I knew about homosexual sex I learned from movies like My Own Private Idaho and Beautiful Thing.

The reason I'm telling you this? Because army service is key in Israeli gay life. It's no accident that the creators of The Bubble chose to open their film with the main character on reserve duty at a checkpoint where he meets a young Palestinian man who will become his lover.

If there was such a thing as an "Israeli gay scene," both the army and Tel Aviv would be part of it. Locals will say Tel Aviv is gay as Christmas, though in reality the scene is quite small. There are only two gay bars and one lesbian bar in the city, and all of them are far from cool. The lesbian bar attracts mostly young, loud girls from outside Tel Aviv; the gay bars are populated by the Israeli version of Chelsea boys--guys who work out all day and think black tank tops are the height of fashion and house music is still hot shit.

On the other hand, Tel Aviv is a very gay-friendly city. You can spot a gay crowd almost anywhere--except the gay bars--and many of those places are the engine of the city's cultural life. For instance, Rif Raf, a small bar on Gruzenberg Street, attracts a mixed gay and straight crowd, and on Monday nights Lima Lima hosts a gay hip-hop night. But the most colorful gay parties in town can be found at the Barzilay club, where Thursdays' "Pag" parties are packed with a young, stylish crowd, described on MySpace as "nice Jewish boys with a vengeance."

"The gay nightlife in Tel Aviv has become a lot more diverse in recent years," says Pag manager Roy Raz, who for bis money considers the men in Tel Aviv the best-looking in the world. "For a such a small country and community, things are looking a hell of a lot better," he says. "A few years age, if you wanted to ge out to a gay party, you would have to put up with the whole gym-house music thing. Today, there's a much bigger variety of music as well as a more diverse crowd. There are a lot of new options, and that's a good thing--as long as they don't steal the crowd from my parties."

It's safe to say the most interesting gay activities in Tel Aviv happen outside the places that define themselves as gay. Truth is, being gay in Israel is no longer a big deal. Ivri Lider, the country's biggest pop singer, is gay. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's daughter is a very politically active lesbian. Gays play major roles in journalism, literature, and the arts. In Israel the gay agenda is becoming a matter of routine.

That's a far cry from Palestinian society; in the territories gay people are subject to arrest and persecution. Still, "there is a Palestinian gay scene," says writer and activist Liad Kantorowicz, who grew up in the United States and Israel. "It's a small community where everyone knows everyone. Up until a few years age, Tel Aviv was an asylum to many gay Palestinians who ran away from the territories." Kantorowicz recounts a story of one Palestinian in Tel Aviv whom the Israeli secret service threatened to out to bis family if he didn't become an agent for them. "That is why the first thing that is said about someone who's gay in the territories is that he must be an agent," Kantorowicz says. "The majority of gay Palestinians live straight lives."

As for an Israeli-Palestinian love affair a la The Bubble, Kantorowicz doesn't believe it's likely. "A lot of Jews have a fetish to be with Arabs and vice versa," she says. "So it happens that two meet in a party and ge home together, but soon after that the differences become clear. It's obvious that having such a relationship is impossible."

In Tel Aviv love across ethnicities isn't the only taboo. Even the most bohemian of Israeli 20-somethings never talk politics. They'll spend most of their life chatting about culture and art in the city's coffee shops, but they're fed up with the conflict. Why, they wonder most uncinematically, would they risk their their lives just for a piece of land?

GAY LIFE IN TEL AVIV

A Westernized, liberal oasis in the Middle East, Tel Aviv is home to a thriving gay culture. Pride parades in the city (top) draw large crowds but not the violence that plagues similar events in Jerusalem. Liberated gay men (bottom) enjoy the nightlife at one of Tel Aviv's gay bars.

Photographed exclusively for the Advocate by Karin Bar on location in Tel Aviv