Vacillating provocatively between romantic comedy and political tragedy, The Bubble is photographed with a sunny brightness that belies the gravity of its intentions.
Set primarily in the fashionable Sheinkin Street district of Tel Aviv, the story follows three left-leaning 20-somethings (two men and a woman) whose notion of political action is to hold a “rave against the occupation.” But when Noam (Ohad Knoller), a sweet-natured music-store clerk and reserve soldier, meets a handsome Palestinian named Ashraf (Yousef Sweid), their escalating affair forces everyone to face reality in the cruelest possible way.
Squeezing a lot of conflict — sexual, ethnic and intellectual — into its 117 minutes, The Bubble is about the appeal of self-delusion and the warmth of comfort zones. Noam’s best friend, Yali (Alon Friedmann), a cafe manager, reproaches Noam for habitually choosing unavailable men yet denies his own attraction to casually aggressive partners.
Meanwhile, Ashraf’s fond sister (Roba Blal) and her future husband, a Hamas leader aptly named Jihad (Shredy Jabarin), negate Ashraf’s homosexuality by coercing him into a straight relationship.
Eytan Fox directs with compassion but also with impatience for his characters’ self-centered naivete, veering somewhat uneasily between these tones and relying on the competence of his actors to smooth the transitions. And though his ending is more poetic than just, it effectively diverts partisan sympathies toward a more general condemnation of violence. Fox may be a romantic, but he understands that love is rarely all you need.
The year was 1991. A Toyota Land Cruiser set out on a 67km journey up the Junda Forest Road (郡大林道) toward an old loggers’ camp, at which point the hikers inside would get out and begin their ascent of Jade Mountain (玉山). Little did they know, they would be the last group of hikers to ever enjoy this shortcut into the mountains. An approaching typhoon soon wiped out the road behind them, trapping the vehicle on the mountain and forever changing the approach to Jade Mountain. THE CONTEMPORARY ROUTE Nowadays, the approach to Jade Mountain from the north side takes an
Last week Joseph Nye, the well-known China scholar, wrote on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s website about how war over Taiwan might be averted. He noted that years ago he was on a team that met with then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “whose previous ‘unofficial’ visit to the US had caused a crisis in which China fired missiles into the sea and the US deployed carriers off the coast of Taiwan.” Yes, that’s right, mighty Chen caused that crisis all by himself. Neither the US nor the People’s Republic of China (PRC) exercised any agency. Nye then nostalgically invoked the comical specter
Relations between Taiwan and the Czech Republic have flourished in recent years. However, not everyone is pleased about the growing friendship between the two countries. Last month, an incident involving a Chinese diplomat tailing the car of vice president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) in Prague, drew public attention to the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) operations to undermine Taiwan overseas. The trip was not Hsiao’s first visit to the Central European country. It was meant to be low-key, a chance to meet with local academics and politicians, until her police escort noticed a car was tailing her through the Czech capital. The
April 15 to April 21 Yang Kui (楊逵) was horrified as he drove past trucks, oxcarts and trolleys loaded with coffins on his way to Tuntzechiao (屯子腳), which he heard had been completely destroyed. The friend he came to check on was safe, but most residents were suffering in the town hit the hardest by the 7.1-magnitude Hsinchu-Taichung Earthquake on April 21, 1935. It remains the deadliest in Taiwan’s recorded history, claiming around 3,300 lives and injuring nearly 12,000. The disaster completely flattened roughly 18,000 houses and damaged countless more. The social activist and