I roomed with a Sublet one summer. He was a Christian goody-goody who –apparently- was too busy praising the Lord to get a job or leave the apartment. Sometimes I think about him. I think about how he said he was “from Chicago” rather than “from an affluent suburb of Chicago,” which is rather a different thing. I think about the time he bought a set of speakers from two dudes driving around in a panel van. Mostly I think about how I could have had the best summer ever if I had just paid off my roommate to have a single instead. Oh well.
Speaking of mismatched pairs, middle-aged New York Times writer Michael (John Benjamin Hickey) is going to live in the apartment of twentysomething hedonist Tomer (Niv Nissim) in Tel Aviv for five days … and apparently this was worth describing in movie form. You know, we had a foreign exchange student once, but I never thought, “gosh, this would make a great screenplay!” Clearly, my loss.
Michael writes a column “The Intrepid Traveler” in which he scours the globe getting to know a random city and then describing it to people who will ignore it while trying to find the comics section of the Sunday Times. (Boy, won’t they be surprised!) His general plan is first to visit some noteworthy city sites, then wander about like a monkeyspank trying to get a feel for the place. Tomer is a director of cheap horror films, so naturally he has no money, but plenty of free time. And Tomer is, hmmm, what’s the term where you’ll screw anything so long as there is an opening somewhere? I think it’s “pansexual”…I don’t mean to throw shade on pansexuals in general; I’m sure many have exclusive tastes. Tomer is young and handsome and seems to view sex the same way I used to collect baseball cards.
It turns out that Michael is gay and in a strained monogamous relationship. He’s old enough to be Tomer’s father. Given logistics and practicality, Tomer continues to reside in the Sublet while Michael is there and to serve as Michael’s guide to Tel Aviv. And the questions immediate roll in: How attracted is Michael to Tomer? How attracted is Tomer to Michael? Will Tomer’s pansexual lifestyle be turn-off or a turn-on? Will the single-parented Tomer see Michael as potential partner, potential good time, a potential father figure, or all three? Will Michael see Tomer as a potential sex partner, a surrogate son, a welcome distraction from his own life, or all three?
Operationally, Sublet strikes me as poor man’s The Visitor…you know, the film that allowed us to remember Richard Jenkins was still alive. Both films are vehicles for an aging white guy to show us he has 
versatility enough to continue being cast in quasi-memorable roles. We like John Benjamin Hickey. We like Michael. We don’t want to see him hurt. At the end of the day, however, this is five days in a city Michael will likely never visit again in his life. There better be some whale of a revelation coming to make us feel that this film is worth more than a smile.
Sublet isn’t a bad film. It’s easy to enjoy the leads and more-or-less sympathize with their given milieus. That said, this is a simple and short picture. It’s light on comedy; it’s light on action; it’s light on punch. It tries to be a deeper film into Act III, which both works and doesn’t. It works in that the dialogue/the situation is believable, but it doesn’t in that the film then ends too quickly, reminding us that it wasn’t really a serious piece to begin with. Sublet is a decent film for LGBTQ month, but I probably wouldn’t recommend it otherwise.
There once was a writer named Mike
Whose column you may or not like
In Israel, my dears
Was a crush of half his years
Can heads –in this land- still end up on a pike?
Not Rated, 89 Minutes
Director: Eytan Fox
Writer: Eytan Fox, Itay Segal
Genre: It’s LGBTQ month, dudes, dudettes, and Deuteranomalies
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: LGBTQ
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Horrified conservatives
