I really, really recommend this film. It’s set in Tel Aviv (and made me want to visit, except that the politics make it kinda complicated), and is basically a love story between an Israeli and a Palestinian guy. That’s not all it is, obviously because of the religious, historical and political issues, but also because it’s firmly grounded in the everyday lives of a group of friends who are figuring out who and what they want to be while enjoying the best and coolest life Tel Aviv has to offer. The ‘bubble’ refers to life in Tel Aviv compared to the rest of Israel, but I think it could also refer to that stage of life where you and everyone you know are young and beautiful and life is relatively uncomplicated.

To me, the depictions of Israeli/Palestinian relations seemed fair, but really I can’t judge. It certainly gave me a more concrete understanding of what life might have been like for those ‘mad Israeli kids’ you meet backpacking when they’ve finished their military service, and the Palestinian issues with checkpoints were well portrayed.

(And the chick who plays Lulu is hot.)

0.3

Puccini for Beginners was quite slick, well played, well written and very New York but overall it was strangely unsatisfying. It might just be that I expect more radical content or film-making from festival films, because if I was to see it at my local cinema it would be a lovely date movie. On the other hand maybe I’m spoilt because for the people I know there’s not much that’s shocking about a lesbian falling for a man.

It’s still nice to see a positive representation of queer life on the screen, and I particularly liked the scenes where passing characters broke out of role to engage with the main character’s internal dialogue.

It felt weirdly transgressive watching heterosexual sex in a cinema full of queer at a Lesbian and Gay film festival.

Itty Bitty Titty Committee opened the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival last night. It was an entertaining start to the festival – cute cast, good production values and cinematography, great soundtrack. There was an occasional clunky “here’s the politics” but it wasn’t so bad that it pulled you out of the experience. It’s definitely not a coming out film and I really enjoyed the way being a lesbian was normalised – it wasn’t an issue in scenes set in a family or work environment.

0.3