Joe + Belle 2011

Joe, Joe, is a young American Jewish woman born in New York who makes a living as a drug dealer and courier in Israel. The story opens with a tense smuggling run as she travels from Bangkok to Tel Aviv, slipping drugs into the country and handing them off to a local dealer who sends her to meet at the club Dark Eighties later that night to sell more. The atmosphere is sharp, sleepless, and morally gray, painting a world where survival often requires risky choices and quick trust.

Meanwhile, Belle is a young French Jewish immigrant who has been staying at Tel Aviv Psychiatric Hospital after a string of suicide attempts. Upon her release into her mother’s care, she learns that her parents disposed of her beloved pet Fred, a revelation that drives her to flee. She climbs onto a building’s roof and teeters on the edge, attempting to end her life, only to stumble upon an open window that she ultimately breaks through, stepping into a world with little safety to anchor her.

When Joe returns to her apartment, she hears unfamiliar noises in the bathroom and enters with a guitar in hand, discovering Belle lying in the tub with a straight razor at the ready. Belle is immediately drawn to Joe, and she presses to accompany her to the club, despite carrying the razor as a memento of her fragility. The two form a fragile connection, and their communication shifts to Hebrew, their second language, as Joe can’t speak French and Belle can’t speak English. The tension between them deepens into something intimate, even as danger closes in around them.

At the club, Joe tries to leave Belle behind, but the newcomer follows, forcing Joe to re-evaluate her boundaries. Back at the apartment, Belle’s persistence becomes a point of contention as Joe locks her out, only for Belle to keep knocking until she’s let in again. When Joe steps out for a cigarette, Belle scours the kitchen and discovers a gun inside the microwave, which she trades for her razor before curling up to sleep on the couch. The quiet moment is interrupted when Joe’s ex-boyfriend, Matan, arrives and mistakes Belle for Joe, a confusion that sets off a chain of violence.

The moment Belle wakes to his kiss, she pulls out the weapon, and the tension erupts into a deadly confrontation. Joe arrives to find Matan on the floor and, in a panic, takes the gun from Belle, but when Matan briefly regains consciousness, he is killed in the ensuing chaos. Abigail, who has been waiting for her boyfriend to return, suspects infidelity and leaves a threatening voicemail on Matan’s cell phone, fueling a spiral of fear and suspicion that blankets the trio.

To move the body, the two women attempt to steal a car. Belle uses her charm to lure a man into giving up his car keys, but they quickly realize neither of them can drive. They abandon the abandoned vehicle and return to the apartment, wrapping the body in blankets until Joe can borrow Abigail’s van. Abigail agrees but is unsettled when she realizes the body is Matan. They dump the corpse in a river, and a somber seriousness settles over the pair as they reflect on their respective ex-lovers before slipping into a nightclub for a moment of levity.

They soon meet the possibility of danger again as Abigail, Lt. Tzedek, and a police officer named Assi close in, forcing the two to flee to a hotel where they share a quiet, charged kiss. A knock on the door by Assi disrupts the moment, and Belle incapacitates the officer and handcuffs him to the bathtub, a stark symbol of their precarious hold on safety.

The chase continues as Joe and Belle board a bus toward Eilat, attempting to vanish from law enforcement. Abigail, Lt. Tzedek, and Shlomtsi follow, hoping to arrest them in the far south. A phone call stirs suspicion in Joe, and they disembark the bus in Sderot, a city under constant rocket attack, where the peril feels almost routine. A siren sounds as they hide in a deserted public restroom, and a charged, intimate moment ensues as they finally consummate their bond.

Over a breakfast afterward, they drift into a local open mic night, where Joe performs a song for Belle. The romance persists even as the surrounding danger never fully releases its grip. The film closes on a note of fragile happiness: Joe and Belle live together in Sderot, a couple weathering the reality of ongoing rocket fire while choosing to remain together, finding a sense of home in each other and in their shared defiance of the dangerous world around them.