Eyal (Lior Ashkenazi) is a professional assassin, a member of Mossad, the Israeli secret service. Eyal is contracted to kill a fugitive Nazi, who’s due to return to Germany after living secretly for decades in South America. His quarry’s granddaughter Pia (Caroline Peters) is estranged from her family, and lives in Israel , where she works happily in a kibbutz. Pia’s brother Axel (Knut Berger) arrives from Berlin, to talk her into returning for her father’s birthday, and Eyal masquerades as a tourist guide so he can spy on them both to hopefully learn the movements of their grandfather.

Eyal is curt to the point of cold, and so the passionate Pia and the exuberant, gay Axel test his professionalism to the limit. Visits to nightclubs and lessons in traditional folk dancing mix the pot. Pia is indifferent to the German-Israeli historical traumas that baseline Eyal’s values, and when Axel has a one-night stand with a Palestinian, racial and political tensions bubble rapidly to the surface. Things become most complicated when the steadily-evolving Eyal starts to realize he may not be able to carry out his contract.

Walk on Water has an appealingly complex first hour, rich with empathetic and insightful characterisations, intelligent performances and a real sense of purpose. The highly dramatic third act, which takes the action to Berlin, contains more of the same, but the geographical movement seems to unsettle the film’s rhythms and what results is a story told in two excellent episodes rather than a movie that feels complete. With the political arm of the story taking over in Berlin, a number of ideas and storylines get very short shrift.

Eyal’s ticking-clock predicament means that Axel, who’d been a compelling main character, is relegated to a thin supporting role. A key scene in a gay bar is fluffed, when Eyal quizzes Axel about anal sex. Does it hurt? What role does Axel prefer? It’s a poised moment, and a juicy tension waits to be generated between the two male leads. But Fox and Uchovsky chicken out: Axel calmly says getting fucked doesn’t really hurt, and that he likes it both ways. Whether or not butt fucking hurts, and despite the prevalence of versatile gay guys, this exchange presented a great chance for the macho hetero guy to butt heads with a macho-identifying gay guy, or for a surprising personal revelation. It could have even produced a brooding sexual tension, or, at least, added an interesting layer to Axel. Instead, we’re left with the gruff hetero detective with a lot to learn about life and the urbane, AC/DC gay guy who calmly floats about in suspended sanguinity. Both characters lose out, and the prickly truce between Eyal and Axel dissolves into a sugary stand-off: don’t ask, don’t tell. Axel’s final decisions are fascinating but we aren’t given any real idea of his motivations or feelings about what he’s done.

We don’t hear much more out of Pia, either, and this is a grave mistake since she was the anchor of the story for the best part of an hour, and Caroline Peters is the film’s most interesting actor. When she reappears, she’s in a relationship that we may have guessed at but which wasn’t developed at all, leaving it a tad inexplicable and the narrative telescoping feels rushed.

But, as in Yossi and Jagger, Fox shows off a marvellous knack for visuals, placing his block-colored characters on blank landscapes (Yossi’s khaki-clad soldiers cavorting in the snow, mud-covered nude men heading for the sea over cream-colored sandy beaches in this film) and a real sensitivity for morbid family scenes, which provide the climax to both films. There’s a warmth and sensitivity suffusing the movie and like Yossi, it never threatens to rot the teeth. Mature supporting roles are well written and handled with aplomb. Carola Regnier as Axel and Pia’s mother, and Gideon Shemer as a Mossad boss, are especially charismatic.

Fox is a film maker racing towards an exciting maturity, and his third feature promises to be a knockout.

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