While the rest of the world was smiling benevolently under the impression that in their spare time between valiantly defeating our enemies, young Israelis were roasting potatoes and singing around the campfire, overgrown playboys Guteh and Eli, are going nowhere, or going 'round in circles, although they haven't hit bottom.
While Guteh is presumably a lifeguard, he spends little time actually guarding lives and more time chasing boys away from peeking into the women's changing rooms and trying to get laid; while his friend Eli, married and with a toddler daughter to whom he pays zero attention, tries to convince his neighbor Altman to let him open a nightclub in Altman's basement; in between which both friends swig bucketsful of Turkish coffee and cognac while commenting on each others' lives.
Like many Israelis, Guteh and Eli are two men stuck in adolescence, as they were never taught what it is to be men other than the one-dimensional macho ethos prevalent in the Mediterranean at the time. Yet in contrast to the cartoonish, vulgar characters inhabiting Chagigá beSnuker and Charlie veChetzi (of the same period, but featuring primarily Jews of Middle Eastern origin), Guteh and Eli embody the allegory of the spiritually "empty cart" that is Israeli society to which the rabbis referred in the early years of the state. Thus perhaps it's no irony that Uri Zohar, who plays Guteh, later became twice-over famous for abandoning the life portrayed in Metzitzim and "getting religion".
Guteh and Eli are barely employed and stay just this side of the law (what's that stuff they snort out of a dropper?), with zero values or anything to carry them from day to day other than the next drink, the next ruse to disperse the persistent peeping Toms, the next scheme to open a nightclub. Meanwhile Altman Junior, who absorbs the message that sexual conquest is respected, and later toddler Meirav (having received no attention from her father and thus craving male attention) will be next in line to take the places of the prostitutes who work the beach and their johns. While I disagree with the other reviewer that it's the best Israeli film ever (I would award that to Or (Mon Tresor) and Knafayim Shvurot), Metzitzim is an engaging study.
