The first feature film by writer-director Yuval Hadadi takes an intimate look at a long-term male relationship. Yoav and Dan (Oded Leopold and Udi Persi) live in Tel Aviv, are at the height of their upscale careers, and have been in a relationship for 15 years. On the night of their anniversary, while their gay friends share photos of their children, one of the couple’s best friends, a single woman and artist named Alma (Ruti Asarsai), announces she’s pregnant. This leads Dan, who is 38, to express his desire to have children to Yoav, who is 42. Yoav ends up making a scene and insulting all of the guests for becoming bougie conformist queers. From there, the film embarks on a character study of Yoav, a man at the point in his life where he has to decide if he is really ready to settle down.

Yoav lives in a time when many gay rights have been won, but he has not quite woken up from the nightmare of the societally imposed self-hatred he’s accustomed to. In the face of his partner asking him to start a family, he flees their home, stays in a dank apartment in a basement, and regresses to the self-destructive behavior of a man half his age.

There’s a lot to like about 15 Years. The actors all deliver strong performances, and the film is framed and lit to look fantastic, with strong attention to set design—the homes and offices really look lived in. But after a strong opening scene at an art opening, and the aforementioned dinner party, the film has little to no action and devolves into repetitive, talkative scenes, usually featuring two characters in medium shots arguing with each other. The actors are all superb. It’s just that there’s a little too much tell and not enough show.

Leopold’s self-destructive Yoav can be lovable one minute and sinister in the next, and Leopold really shines in the role. Persi’s Dan is mostly one-note, but he’s easy on the eyes. (Dan also has a courtship with another man while he and Yoav are on the outs, but this never really goes anywhere.) Asarsai’s Alma is charming and fierce in her own right, but she never does anything more than support the main story line. Yet a significant portion of her artwork deals with Yoav. The two have been friends since they were kids, and she has devoted much of her creative life to studying him—what makes him a compelling subject to her? Are her studies of him lucrative for her?

The film never really answers these questions aside from just laying them there for us to figure out on our own. This is one time I could have used a little more spoon feeding.