Midnight love affair.

Ellenzweig, Allen

EYES WIDE OPEN is a compressed drama of forbidden same-sex love within an insular community, namely the highly regulated society of Orthodox Jewry in a tight-knit neighborhood in Jerusalem. Presented in New York at this year's Jewish Film Festival, the film is a stark reminder that the irregular contours of gay experience are perhaps best depicted by those outside the commercial cinema who are not bound by its cosmetic imperatives.

Eyes tells the tale of Aaron, a kosher butcher who at film's start is taking over his father's shop after the elder man has died. Soon a young, darkly handsome yeshiva student, Ezri, arrives on the scene in a downpour, asking to borrow Aaron's phone in order to call a friend. We only hear Ezri's half of the conversation, just enough to clue us in to the young man's predicament: he's new in town and has no place to stay, and his friend, whom we never see, is understood to be unreceptive to his plea. Soon Aaron lets the young man camp out in the upstairs bedroom that his father had used as a retreat from his business duties.

Director Haim Tabakman and his screenwriter, Merav Doster, let the story unfold in reticent, deliberate scenes in which Aaron, a married man with several young children, mentors Ezri in the butcher trade while Ezri gains tentative entry into the life of the family and of Aaron's synagogue. Aaron's wife Rivka welcomes the young man to the family dinner table, keeping her own wariness at bay while observing how Ezri plays the role of a respectful guest, complimenting the parents on their beautiful family and singing along as they celebrate the Sabbath.

In measured steps, Tabakman allow us to see how two men of different temperaments--Aaron, reserved and strictly adherent to religious precepts, and Ezri, artistic and impulsive, and having a mysterious past--quietly take each other's measure. The two men develop a growing understanding and intimacy whose sexual component only Ezri is at first willing to acknowledge. His first exploratory approach toward Aaron, which the butcher respectfully repulses, is performed at a pitch of emotional and erotic intensity that's rare in film--not the usual choreographed Hollywood seduction with beautiful stars, as if only the mechanics of sex by glamorous people could capture an audience.

For those of us used to the seductions of Hollywood movies, Zohar Strauss as Aaron will hardly fit the bill, though his soulful eyes set above a dark beard, and his dignified calm and surprising warmth, permit us to see him as the paternal safe harbor that Ezri seeks. For his part, Ran Danker as Ezri brings an intense, smoldering, subterranean sexuality to his presence on screen, as if the very social constraints against which Ezri fights produce an aphrodisiac effect. But Danker, too, would hardly be a Hollywood casting director's dream choice.

Still, as the intimacy between the men grows, and their professional affiliation borders on the suspect in the eyes of the community leaders as well as to Aaron's wife, the story takes a modest detour and introduces us to a parallel straight couple. Theirs, too, is a forbidden love, where a young woman, set by her parents for a respectable marriage, is defying them by going around with a somewhat older man who is judged a social loser. We see how the rabbi and other community leaders threaten the man in his own home, in front of his hapless mother, and waste no time assuring him that he could face more violent consequences by young enforcers of community order. From that point on, the threat of some horrible denouement for Aaron and Ezri hangs over the film.

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Eyes Wide Open is a quiet and compelling work of humanist cinema, beautifully acted, of the kind we more commonly see coming out of Eastern Europe or Latin America. And if you fear that the setting of Orthodox Jewry might be too parochial or specialized for your tastes, consider that this same story could easily unfold among Mennonites, Mormons, fundamentalist Christians, or observant Muslims. Certainly, one current challenge for some gay people is their re-integration into the religious communities of their birth; only in America do we naively believe that everyone is free to simply walk away from their familial and community oppressors. Some have to stay and fight.

Eyes Wide Open

Directed by Haim Tabakman

Original screenplay by Merav Doster

Distributed by Here Films

Allen Ellenzweig is the author of' The Homoerotic Photograph (1992) and a frequent contributor to this journal.