Product Description

Studio: Strand Releasing Release Date: 04/06/2006

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #22500 in DVD
• Released on: 2004-03-30
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Color, DVD, Subtitled, NTSC
• Original language: Hebrew
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 71 minutes

Amazon.com
The moving Yossi & Jagger, at 65 minutes in length, has the focused impact and emotional clarity of a fine short story. A multiple award winner (among other prizes, Yossi & Jagger took a Best Actor honor for Ohad Knoller at the 2003 Tribeca Film Festival), this unusual love tale, set on a snowy Israeli-Lebanese border facing possible Hezbollah incursions, has an unexpected sweetness and buoyancy. Knoller plays square-jawed, no-nonsense Yossi, company commander of an Israeli Defense Forces unit exhausted from sleepless nights anticipating an ambush. The handsome, fun-loving Jagger (Yehuda Levi), nicknamed for his rock-star appeal, is platoon leader and, unknown to all, Yossi's secret lover. The two arrange trysts by going off together on missions, and while Jagger begs Yossi to leave the army when the former's service is up, Yossi reminds him that real life is not a romantic movie. Meanwhile, the platoon's other characters and a trio of visitors--a colonel (Sharon Reginiano) and his two female soldier-companions (Hani Furstenberg, Aya Koren)--prove to be a lot of fun sorting out everything from menus to love lives before their next, possibly lethal mission. Director Eytan Fox's naturalistic touch, and ability to highlight the expansiveness of mature love even in the most tragic and ironic of circumstances, is something to marvel at. --Tom Keogh

Customer Reviews

Surprisingly moving
I wasn't sure what to expect from this Israeli film about the love between two male soldiers, and I was pleasantly surprised by the humor and surprisingly moved by the clandestine love between uptight Yossi and the more free-spirited Jagger (called that because he looks and acts like a rock star).

The movie is fairly short--maybe a little over an hour--but it packs a lot in a that short time.

Brothers in Arms
After a brief stint in Hollywood, director Eytan Fox returned to Israel and made this beautiful and passionate film which speaks through its simplicity. Though 65 minutes long, Yossi and Jagger captures the spirited elan and tensions of Israeli youths in the armed forces and presents certainly one of the most resonant film romances I have been fortunate enough to watch.

The film makes good use by perverting its own clichés with its characterisations and a predictable, sentimental story. The surprise is a truly touching portrait of youth on the front lines. In war some lose their limbs, some their minds and others their loves, only to be reborn. Yossi and Jagger doesn't wallow in it: it's fast moving; there's no time for preaching. Not until the film is over will you really start to consider its realities.

Yossi and Jagger makes no plea for any cause. That makes it immensely watchable. Here are two people in love, and other (unrequited) love interests, each with distinct personalities, frame that image, each character pushing its own personal objectives, whims, desires and dreams.

Ohad Knoller(stage credits) and popular Israeli tv star Yehuda Levi give excelling performances.

This movie essentially also delivers the pictorial completeness of David Kaplan's informative book: Brothers and Others in Arms: The Making of Love and War in Israeli Combat Units.

I also recommend Walk on Water by the same director.

Don't ask, don't tell...
Even in a country where there is no "don't ask, don't tell" policy, we see that reality shoves young lovers like Yossi and Jagger into the closet. Who needs written rules and regulations to make scared young gays hide their love for each other? But despite the unwritten law of silence, we see a slice of real society through a great cast of widely-ranging characters who all have different reactions.

Of course I adored the gay love story in and of itself! Yossi and Jagger are so cute and full of youthful liveliness and excitement for each other. Who wouldn't think back to living their own adolescent romance and all the enjoyment that brings?

But I think Yossi and Jagger is much more about everyone else's reactions to an unspoken "secret." The woman in love, the buddies in the barracks, a jealous soldier who hates one of the main characters, the military brass, the unknowing mother: they all live in close quarters and have the truth right before their eyes, and what is interesting about the movie is that some of them choose to see it and some of them don't. In the final scene, we see that gay people not only suffer from discrimination and secrecy, but also from having their whole life stories re-written and wrongly interpreted by the people around them, which is a tragedy in and of itself.