Plot & Summary
Karin Albou’s Tunisia-based “The Wedding Song” could be entitled “The East Side Story,” given thematic similarities to the Broadway musical inspired by the story of Romeo and Juliet. Albou creates a scene of adolescent best-friendship, if you will, between two sixteen-year-olds in Tunis; one Jewish, one Muslim, whose feelings about each other are to change during the German occupation of Tunisia’s capital in 1942. While World War II forms a backdrop to the adventure, “Le Chant des mariees” is not a war story but one that centers on the relationship of two young women, each envious of what the other has. What emerges is an entertaining, even humorous look at Tunisian-Arabic culture, and more important, a sympathetic, powerful dramatization of two girls on the cusp of adulthood who have for years enjoyed an intensely loyal friendship.
As for cultural considerations, consider the custom of Tunisian women to wait excitedly outside the room of a couple who are settling in on their wedding night. The extended family whoop it up when the man comes out with a blood-stained section of bedding. Among elements that offer an original quality to Albou’s drama, a scene you probably will not find in any other film, is the practice of shaving all the pubic hair from the bride a day or so before her wedding, a painful procedure that photographer Laurent Brunet fixes upon in close-up. Full frontal nudity of women on camera? No problem either—though the men are treated more modestly.
Muslims and Jews have lived together in Tunisia, mostly in harmony for well over a thousand years. In the film we see one of those years, 1942, focusing on the friendship between Myriam (Lizzie Brochere), a Jewish 16-year-old who lives with her poverty-stricken mother, Tita (Karin Albou), in the same courtyard as her Muslim pal, Nour (Olympe Borval). Myriam envies Nour as the latter is passionately in love with her future husband, Khaled (Najib Oudghiri). Nour envies Myriam as the Jewish girl is able to attend school (which Nour cannot) and need not wear a veil in public. When the Nazi program against the Jews of Tunis takes hold, as shown by hate-ridden broadcasts about how “global Jewry started the war” and leaflets dropped from a German plane with similar propaganda, Khaled, whose marriage depends on his finding a job, is taken in by the anti-Semitic propaganda. He gets a job with the German occupation, and warns his fiancé to dump Myriam. Myriam’s mother, meanwhile pushes her daughter to marry Raoul (Simon Abkarian), a much older man, a wealthy doctor whose money could allow her to pay a fine to the occupying forces for being a Jew. Political pressures force the girls apart, belying their need to remain best friends, while Raoul faces the choice of doing some Nazi bidding voluntarily or heading off to a work camp with the poor—who cannot pay the fine.
Karin Albou polishes her feminist credentials in a tale that provides individuals with genuine complexity. Khaled, though acting the macho man, displays more worldly traits by his willingness to marry a woman who is not a virgin. Raoul, offered a job with the Germans that allows him to wear a suit and avoid the work camp, struggles with his conscience. The story is favored by strong performances from both principal cast and ensemble of supporting women, all told amid deliberately desaturated colors to give the tale a strong feeling of place and time.
Rating
6.6/10 ;123 votesDownload movie with titles (700 MB):
No password
No comments:
Post a Comment