'My favorite movie male-on-male love scene is one in which the male couple are separated by a cell wall but brought together by a straw and a shared lungful of smoke. And no, it doesn't hurt that Knoller and Sweid are totally cute, too.' -Dale Peck, novelist, 'Sprout' (2006) The scene's great for two reasons: first, because it dares to show an Israeli Jewish man and a Palestinian man making love, and second, because it eschews the spit-and-smile approach to movies like Brokeback Mountain to give viewers a more realistic version of what happens when someone loses his anal cherry-it's a little awkard, a little painful, but also irresistble and tender and ineffably pleasurable. 'It would have to be when Noam (Ohad Knoller) and Ashraf (Yousef Sweid) first have sex in Eytan Fox's The Bubble. The men can’t resist one another, and we can’t resist hitting rewind. Lust provides the thrust of Zach and Shaun’s long-anticipated night of passion, an explosion of atavistic attraction - pull at the belt get the fly untangle the legs - but it’s love that wins the day in this movie about a young man coming to terms with his sexuality.
