8/10
Good, but not for the action lovers or the homophobes
8 October 2022
A fellow picks up the phone to report a problem. He doesn't want to get deeply involved, so he prefers not to state his name. But matters don't proceed as expected, and he winds up feeling a burden of guilt. It damages all the other aspects of his life, but how can he dispel it?

This is a low-budget movie centered around that one character and his distress, although there is a believable supporting cast. One cause of the hero's predicament is that he's come into contact with a community foreign to his comfortably bourgeois background, and the film is quietly ironic about how his little predicament is dwarfed by the big issues around him in South Tel Aviv, notably African immigrants and gentrification. Still, I think everyone can identify with the well-acted situation in which the protagonist regrets a mistake that he can't reverse.

The protagonist is gay, and in the movie homosexuality is emphatically normalized. If that sounds like an oxymoron, it rather feels like one too, as extra screen time is devoted to gay goings-on that don't advance the plot. Enough, I'm afraid, to risk consigning the movie to a niche audience, although I understand HBO has bought it for streaming.
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