CYBERSPACE – Jonathan Agassi is the subject of a lengthy examination on Haaretz.com, the website for the venerable Israeli newspaper, tied to the award-winning new documentary feature “Jonathan Agassi Saved My Life” by Tomer Heymann.
The Jerusalem Film Festival recently awarded the doc the prize for Best Israeli Documentary Feature. That honor was bestowed, the festival said, “due to its powerful main character and narrative that reflects society’s complexity. A rare and intimate look at the world of porn and escorting, as well as a unique mother and son relationship, redefining familiar family norms.”
Heymann has described Agassi as “the biggest porn star to ever have come out of Israel.”
The director’s life and career is also examined, alongside Agassi, in the Haaretz.com feature.
“The film’s style suits the multilayered presence of Jonathan himself, certainly in regard to the protagonist of a documentary,” notes journalist Uri Klein. “His exterior appearance and his richly tattooed body project extroverted masculinity, hence the high effectiveness of the drama when his life shatters into fragments.”
The article takes note of director Heymann’s central theme of family and connection, a thread that runs through his oeuvre.
“Heymann’s preoccupation with family continues in ‘Jonathan Agassi Saved My Life.’ The other significant person in addition to Jonathan is his mother, who supports and accepts him even when she is critical of him,” writes Klein. “Jonathan’s mother is the only firm rock in his life, but she, too, knows where the boundary between them runs. In one of the film’s best scenes, Jonathan says to his mother that he’s her man and she corrects him with the tough softness that characterizes her: ‘No, you’re my boy.’”
Klein observes the attitude of Agassi’s mother towards her son “parallels” that of Heymann for the subject of his film, “even if Heymann obviously doesn’t possess the same emotional tie to Jonathan. Neither of them judge him, and this makes possible the supportive relationship between Jonathan and his mother and also allows Heymann’s picture to be balanced and controlled even when the reality it presents is wild and ugly.”
The film is “free of sensationalism and certainly of sentimentality,” Klein says, nor does it “turn its gaze away from the reality it depicts, and which at times is shown to us in a harrowing head-on mode.”
“The interplay between intimate, even soft scenes and scenes that are difficult to watch – and there are plenty of those – makes this a film that presents to us a wounded humanity and itself as an open wound.”
The film will be broadcast over four episodes on Channel 8 in Israel, where the Heymann retains distribution rights. Vienna-based Autlook Filmsales has picked it up for worldwide representation; click here for details.
Click here to read the entire feature; registration may be required.
Find Agassi on Instagram.
Photo credit: Tomas Shemesh.
