Roughly three quarters into Eytan Fox’s Yossi & Jagger, Jagger finally puts his foot down. When the impending ambush is over, he tells him, they will travel East, they will rent a hotel room, they will ask for a single bed. “I’m tired of pretending,” he tells Yossi, and from that moment on you don’t have to be a psychic (or an avid movie queen) to know Jagger won’t be returning from the ambush. Yossi responds with the traditional “You knew what you were getting into...” speech that he will undoubtedly recant as Jagger is brought to the brink of death. This is not to say Avner Bernheimer’s script is weak, in a sense he turns conventional melodrama on its head. And considering he telegraphs the climax it is surprisingly effective and yes, wrenching.
Based on a true story, Yossi and Jagger is a cinematic coupe de grace achieved by tactical strategy. Using documentary film technique (hand-held cameras, natural lighting, flat colors) Eytan Fox gives his narrative a much needed jolt. I was struck by the difference between Yehuda Levi’s publicity stills and his appearance in the film as Jagger. Though he is handsome by any standards, the efforts to de-glamorize him were almost startling. It is just one of numerous instances in which Fox begs comparison between the best of all worlds and the world as it is. He creates tension between characters who are cynical and idealistic. When Jagger makes his plea for openness, Yossi (Ohad Knoller) dismisses him, “This isn’t a fucking American movie.” Ironies and nudges abound in Yossi & Jagger. Fox gives us a dry, low-key depiction of life on a remote army base on the Israeli-Lebanese border. And yet the tension, the humanity, the texture comes through. Particular credit must be given to the cast for their extremely subtle yet faithful work in this film. The energy level is controlled, subdued, but the chemistry, the sparks, are there.Yossi & Jagger asks us to reconsider the nature of romance, the dichotomy we often presume between a dream of utopian life and the sum and substance of our behavior. The need for romance, or disappointment in it shapes each character’s point of view. They seem disaffected but in the end we see romance is not so much luxury or wish as a grace that makes the world bearable. Yaeli (Aya Koren) is in love with Jagger, wants him so badly she has trouble distinguishing between her heart’s desire and all evidence to the contrary. One of the great sadnesses of the film is that with Jagger, Yossi has stumbled upon the dream all others yearn for, and yet he takes it for granted. Keeps it hidden. The heterosexual ideal of romantic love prevails over the reality, even though it has failed him. Ultimately Yossi is the one who clings to fantasy and both of them suffer for it.
Yossi and Jagger is in some ways a dialectic on the need for romance despite the demands of daily life. The obsession with maintaining appearance as opposed to personal integrity. The two commanders sneak away on a false pretext and drive off a rabbit because of Yossi’s paranoia. He can’t even make love if a rabbit is “watching.“ Jagger does a goofy riff on the bunny’s facial expression and henceforth the rabbit becomes his totem. Jagger is gentle and sweet natured, spontaneous, happy to be silly and make others laugh. For all his insouciance he is wiser than Yossi, who lives in constant fear of persecution.
Yossi is comfortable in the closet because it has yet to cost him anything. He plays it so close to the vest, that in the 11th hour, he cannot bring himself to hold Jagger, or kiss him, until it’s too late. In the classic fashion of fairy tales and fables, he doesn’t realize how precious his comrade and lover is until he’s gone. If they’d been “only” buddies, Yossi would have probably expressed his feelings willingly and extravagantly. Yossi & Jagger is cinema verite’, in this case, melodrama masquerading as documentary. The commonplace style heightens the value of romance, just as we understand why characters broke into song during Pennies from Heaven. The corny music, the quirky script, the queer ingenue frolicking in the snow and waggling his butt. Taken as a whole, it suggests queer love is not restricted to the fanciful or forbidden or ideal world, sometimes it’s how the world is. In Yossi and Jagger Eytan Fox explores how the two can overlap. And how real love can trump the heterosexual paradigm, despite the religious right’s empty promises.