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The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

Uri Omanuti's monologues are stunning. This is so touching that I cried for about a minute at some point. The conflicts that the characters face and their feelings are easy to relate to because they are part of the life or every person, straight or gay. Watching this movie for the first time in 2013, it's hard to believe it was created 16 years ago. Detaching itself from politics and gay rights issues, it just tells a personal story which is very moving and very real.This movie is one of the first Israeli movies to depict homosexuality in a positive way, as a normal thing, long before it became widely accepted.

Gotta Have Heart, or as it was originally named in Hebrew: 'A Husband with a Heart' (Ba'al Ba'al Lev), was originally produced for Channel 2 of the Israeli Television, as a stand-alone film in a series named: 'Short stories about Love'. This film immediately stood out among the many other excellent films in the series, both due to its gay theme, as well as its campy and fantasy-like style.The film relates to a classic Jewish musical: 'Kunilemel', telling the story of mixed identities of two identical twins, one an orthodox Jew and the other a secular. The two songs included in 'Ba'al Ba'al Lev' (as well as its title) are borrowed from 'Kunilemel': one dealing with the identity conflicts of its main character, the other with the marriage fantasies of its heroine, looking for 'a husband with a heart'.The use of music has always played an important role in Fox's movies. This is demonstrated in his first short movie, 'After', where the original score was composed by Yehuda Poliker, an out-of-the-closet gay, one of the most successful and admired musicians in Israel, and the theme song 'Wave, Carry Me' sang by the Israeli mega-star Hava Alberstein (in Hebrew: 'Sa'eni Gal', Gal being the first name of Fox's spouse, Gal Uchovsky, credited for writing / screenplay in Ba'al Ba'al Lev and Walk on Water). In later films (Yossi and Jagger, Walk on Water) Fox has been working with Ivri Lider, another out-of-the-closet gay, a very successful young Israeli musician.Watching this film several times by now, I still find it a rare gem. It is colourful, campy and fun to watch, and yet manages to entail intelligent notions. But most of all, it is highly touching, and like other Eytan Fox movies, this film leaves you with a tear in the corner of your eye. But unlike other Fox movies, in Ba'al Ba'al Lev this tear is accompanied by a huge smile that walks with you for several days after.

This is a special little movie. It centres around four characters, but it is Nohav, the boy with big dreams who stands out. His ever present smile dominates the movie, and leaves the viewer with a warm glow.Excellent stuff.