Ha-Sippur Shel Yossi 2012

Stephen Holden, New York Times: "Yossi" tells the beautifully acted but overly sentimental story of a man's emotional rebirth in a more sexually liberated era. It is also a pointed portrayal of the revolution in social attitudes inside the most liberal and secularized of Israeli cities. Read more

Nathan Rabin, AV Club: The film's central romance veers into the realm of wish-fulfillment, but it's still drawn with tenderness and sensitivity ... Read more

Loren King, Boston Globe: Knoller manages to make even a withdrawn character compelling, and worth rooting for as Yossi struggles to shed his shell. Read more

Ben Sachs, Chicago Reader: Eytan Fox depicts modern gay life and contemporary Tel Aviv with sympathy and knowing insight, and he excels at creating casual rapport among actors; yet in film after film he undermines these gifts with hamfisted melodramatic plotting. Read more

Robert Abele, Los Angeles Times: Predictable if measured uplift aside, Fox keeps "Yossi" effortlessly affecting, graced with deadpan humor and a knowingness about lonely lives. Read more

Rene Rodriguez, Miami Herald: It's a slight but uplifting charmer that serves as a feel-good bookend to the sadder first film. Read more

John Anderson, Newsday: Beneath its economical story line, "Yossi" is also about leaving the past behind in a larger, national, more metaphysical fashion, too. Read more

Ella Taylor, NPR: Yossi is an unabashedly populist entertainment with a spirit conciliatory enough to melt the heart of any naysayer. Read more

Elizabeth Weitzman, New York Daily News: His struggles remain compelling, thanks to Knoller's sad-eyed authenticity. Read more

Farran Smith Nehme, New York Post: The film keeps its focus small, but the trouble is, the characters' emotions stay that way, too. Read more

Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, Chicago Sun-Times: It's serious about its characters and their emotions, but still finds room for humor. Read more

David Lewis, San Francisco Chronicle: "Yossi" offers genuine pleasures (even some of Fox's trademark musical numbers). Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: The film's pacing sputters as Fox drags Yossi through dreary scenes of self-denying repression. Read more

Joe Williams, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: The several allusions to Thomas Mann's forbidden-love novel "Death in Venice" are apt, but "Yossi" is also a standalone film and an extraordinary sequel. Read more

Rick Groen, Globe and Mail: Yossi is an early spring breeze of a film - too delicate to be substantial but definitely holding the promise of warmth. Read more

Linda Barnard, Toronto Star: Knoller is wonderful as the emotionally cut-off, yet vulnerable Yossi, who yearns for something more from life, but feels both terror at the prospect and unworthiness to claim it. Read more

Ben Walters, Time Out: Knoller's superbly underplayed performance ensures that Yossi's sad-sack tendencies aren't allowed to alienate him from our affections. Read more

Keith Uhlich, Time Out: The perfectly sculpted, entirely sure-of-himself Tom ultimately seems more of a construct than a character, his carefree nature shaped almost entirely by the very wish-fulfillment cliches that the movie otherwise sidesteps.m his mostly self-created shell. Read more

Melissa Anderson, Village Voice: Ten years later, Yossi powerfully probes the grief that still consumes the surviving ex-soldier, now working as a physician in Tel Aviv. Read more

Stephanie Merry, Washington Post: "Yossi" has an air of lightness but never feels insignificant. Read more

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: An affecting and admirably unsentimental portrait of lost love. Read more