Main cast: John Benjamin Hickey (Michael), Niv Nissim (Tomer), Lihi Kornowski (Daria), Miki Kam (Malka), Peter Spears (David), Tamir Ginsburg (Kobi), and Gabriel Loukas (Guy)
Director: Eytan Fox
Hmm, Sublet is a film directed and co-written by Eytan Fox, which likely means that it’s full of psychobabble and navel gazing from self absorbed characters that reek of misery and self loathing, people walking endlessly along streets and corridors… and hot guys doing things like going skinny dipping or just lounging around naked for no reason at all.
Sold.
This movie pairs a typical couple that have become a cliché at this point. We have the older, cynical American, Michael, who has lived through the AIDS crisis of the 1980s, loved and lost, and is now in Tel Aviv to get materials for his next New York Times travel article. He meets Tomer, a free-spirited film student that sublets his apartment to Michael. Hence, the story begins as two men bond eventually despite their very different outlook and approaches to life.
You know how it is. Michael’s neat, Tomer’s a mess. Michael likes quiet, Tomer plays his music loud. He’d rather stay at the hotel, but Tomer needs the money so he insists that Michael stay anyway. Luckily both men are hot and look good naked, so hey, chalk this one as another proof that beautiful people belong together no matter what.
I spend the first parts of the movie cringing a bit because yikes, that place is so messy that if I were Michael, I wouldn’t stay there at all unless they thoroughly disinfect the whole place first. That makes Tomer an asshole landlord of sorts, as he doesn’t even have the grace to empty his stuff out of the wardrobe and bathroom that Michael would be using.
Then, with this being an Eytan Fox movie, of course there would be the obligatory scenes of Michael walking around the place, the camera panning in on the lovely scenery and how everyone in Tel Aviv is so hot and beautiful, so much so that I can only speculate that this movie must be funded by the Israeli tourism board or something. The camera even pans closely to the Israeli flag now and then, mind you.
The movie drags like nobody’s business. Oh look, Michael visits a museum, so here are 10 minutes of him doing so. Here are another five minutes of him getting ready in the morning. One can argue that Mr Fox is demonstrating the subtleties of human pain oozing through the act of picking one’s nose in the morning for 15 minutes, but I personally suspect it’s more of a case of an unfinished or half-finished script being padded like crazy to meet the run time.
Conversations are akin to that in a pornographic film, albeit at a greater level of eloquence. People don’t talk, they monologue to just get things out of the way, and these two bare their souls and give the other person their entire history, insecurities, and angst over their first proper conversation. The whole thing is as stilted as can be, and unlike a pornographic film, this one doesn’t have the courtesy to keep the boring stuff to a minimum before getting to the reason why people are watching this thing: naked hot guys faking the bump and grind.
Alas, Niv Nissim clearly doesn’t know what leg day is, and that’s distracting as can be. John Benjamin Hickey is a hot daddy, but eh, he can’t carry the hotness all on his own. People, we have fallen so low since the days of Lior Ashkenazi’s beautiful rear end and dingleberries bared for two glorious minutes in Walk on Water.
Watching Sublet, I feel like it’s just one of Mr Fox’s past movies given a wallpaper change. The way the whole thing plays out is very similar to the pattern of his past movies, right down to the eye-rolling “I shagged a hot guy in Israel and I am now a more profound person” conclusion.
Sure, it’s a gorgeously filmed thing, but I feel like Mr Fox is just lazily rehashing his usual repertoire by now. Perhaps he’s bought into the hype that people are watching his films for the high art of it all, but come on, let’s be real. Without the eye candy, his films are as entertaining as watching beige paint dry.
