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Divines (2016)
This narrative is a great example to me that fairy tales don't come true.
Winner of the 2016 Audience Award for New Auteurs at AFI Fest, DIVINES is a feature film loaded with emotion that pivots from one side of the spectrum to the other. It is not a coming of age story but rather, a story about two girls that are best friends and the lead's, Dounia, conflict of her soul. Director Hounda delivers a touching piece of cinema that blurred my emotion of how I feel about the lead character played by Oulaya Amamra. The protagonist's circumstances and choices make for a masterful narrative story that ultimately leaves you feeling the characters emptiness and guilt.
Dounia is an ambitious girl who lives in a gypsy camp in Paris with her mother, who is considered the camp slut. The fact that she is a bastard child, affects her temperament when she is amidst her peers. This is a burden that Dounia carries around with her that shapes her attitude and choices. The only person in her life that brings light and joy is her friend Maimouna. With ties to her Islamic faith, Maimouna is positioned to have better sense than Dounia. However, paired together their childlike wonder and fantasy of becoming rich is enough to lure them into participating in a world of licentious behavior.
Hounda's directing, clever scene selection and storytelling through the lens, created the opportunity for me to participate in Dounia's and Maimouna childlike wonder. Throughout the film I am constantly changing my mind on how I feel about the two friends. Credit to Hounda use of cleaver devices in her narrative story telling in particular the cinematography. Accompanied by brilliant acting from Oulaya. Hounda sister in real life, Hounda visuals brought me in when the girls were fantasizing about driving a Ferrari. She successfully captured their childlike wonder that allowed me to imagine alongside the characters as if I was a child riding in the car with them. This creative storytelling provided me the opportunity to care for the girls despite their wicked and edacious actions.
The pacing of the film is superb doubling down on Dounia's disturbed circumstances and poor decision making motivated by disease only money could cure. I often found my emotion being teeter- tottered. On one side, my inner child wants Dounia and Maimouna to succeed in obtaining the riches they desire, even through indecent means. On the other end of the spectrum, Hounda pulls me back to reality through the unfolding of each scene. The harsh reality of Dounia's choices surrounded by the reality of a young girl involved in street life and her motivation of easy virtue slowly pulled me back ultimately lead me to judge the character as immoral.
In the end I was left feeling empathy for the characters. This narrative is a great example to me that fairy tales don't come true. The happy ending presented for Dounia was just that a fairy tale. Her choices fueled by her ambition for money lead her down all the wrong paths that striped her of her essence. The characters motivation provided her heart and soul with meaning but ended up being the very thing that left her heartless and empty in the end.
La Ciénaga (2001)
If Martel's mission was to leave me stuck in the bog with the family's misery for an hour and a half she succeded.
The pool doesn't work and it hasn't been working for a couple of years. This is a
metaphor in the film, La Ciénaga, meaning "the bog" in English. As in a bog, everything gets stuck, which is also the case with the Argentine economy. It has been in a slump for some time now. The summer estate pool is filthy, the light bulbs are flickering and drunk grey-hairs are walking around. The parents are aging. The father is an adulterer. The mother is a pity party. The teenage girls are curious and the boys are always playing in the swamp. La Ciénaga is a one of a series of three for the director Martel. All three of the films are depictions or memories of Martel's childhood in the northwestern part of Argentina. La Ciénaga depicts a memory of her upper middle class family staying in their dilapidated summer home, La Mandrogora, during one of the many Argentine financial crises.
Stuck and miserable, Doña Marcel stutters around with her scarred bust, seemingly permanent sunglasses and vino cup topped with ice as the summer melts her away into another slippery alcoholic slope. She is empty. Her husband is an adulterer who just dyed his hair black for the Carnaval. Too bad he is too drunk himself to accomplish much. She, on the other hand, is melting away in unhappiness. Looking to the Indian servants for support only ends with accusations, racists remarks and an endless ringing telephone.
There are Catholic references throughout the story. These wrap together the end of the film, when Momi, Marcel's teenage daughter, loses all faith and hope. Her best friend, and also live-in Indian servant, Isabella, leaves the family and her job to live with Perro, her lover. Martel visually alludes to, but never reveals in dialog, that Isabella becomes pregnant, which is why she left with Perro. Momi is mortified. She goes into town to see the sighting of the Virgen del Carmen; a symbol of hope and faith to the Argentine Catholics.
The casting of the film is fair. In my opinion, it failed in doing its job and did not make it easy for me to believe that the Marcel's are a family. Perhaps the actors were selected for their abilities and not because the they could pass as a family. The production design and camera work was excellent. Martel did not fall short of making me feel as though I was in a sticky swamp. I definitely felt the sweat of the swamp, it was sucking me in little by little.
I did not particularly empathize with the characters. I did not experience a connection to any of them. The overtone of bigotry towards the Indians, overlaid with a story about a woman who is trying to get a grip on her life and her bourgeois tendencies, detached me from the family. I did not care about any of them. If Martel's mission was to leave me stuck in the bog
with the family's misery for an hour and a half she succeeded.
Martel's most notable scene is when Doña Marcel trips on some towels and falls at the pool, resulting in open lacerations on her chest. As well as when the boys are hunting and they come across a cow that is stuck in the bog. The pacing of the film is executed very well during Doña Marcel accident. Although, I was not interested in the story of the film, I did feel many emotional beats. The film does not pay off for me in the end, though I could have missed the sighting of the Virgen.