21/05/2011

Tackling the various melodramatic and tragicomic angles of the complex subject of women’s subjugation in Muslim countries, French-Romanian director Radu Mihaileanu’s The Source [+see also:
trailer
film profile], the last Competition title of the 64th Cannes Film Festival, was welcomed to controversy after its premiere on the Croisette.

Opening captions introduce this film (co-produced by France, Morocco, Belgium and Italy) that unfolds in a village of the Maghreb or the Arabian peninsula, which suffers an excess of good intentions and a commendable point of view, but it is too didactic in its support of women’s emancipation.

Nevertheless, the story of a revolutionary sex strike, conducted to demand that the men share the back-breaking work carried out by the women (getting water from the faraway source and bring it back, dropping it on the road along the way), has no lack of, often entertaining, jabs in all directions (religion, love and arranged marriages, corruption and the squandering of public power, economic instability, education, immigration, the media, fundamentalism and illuminated Islam…).

This Manichaean premise is the basis of various episodes that ridicule the men, who are stunned by the growing audaciousness of their female counterparts, yet too many subplots unbalance the film, despite solid performances, especially from Leila Bekhti as the lead and Biyouna.

After the birth of a baby boy, the women of the village dance and sing a hymn to beauty while the men take in the good news at the bar where they wile away their days ever since a drought struck the region several years ago. But a discordant voice will disrupt established order and tradition in which all the hardest jobs fall on the women’s shoulders, causing half the children to die before birth or in early infancy.

That discordant voice is Leila (Bekhti), the teacher’s wife, a “foreigner” (from the country’s south) who can read and write, who upon proposing a “love strike” is deemed a "witch". Initially, Leila’s initiative scandalises the majority of her female friends and amuses the men, but then progressively turns into declared war (arguments break out, positions are polarised, pressures mount), in which the women’s intelligence and tenacity proves decisive.

Shot in Morocco in beautiful mountainous landscapes, The Source obviously echoes the revolutions underway in Arab countries. Ironically, this decidedly feminist film that fervently waves the flag of freedom against slavery was made by a man. Who pays tribute to the strength of the "weaker sex" with a political, idealistic cinematic statement about vast social change.

(Translated from French)