Inch'Allah Dimanche | Marie-France Pisier, Fejria Deliba | The finesse with which the Zouida is...

Inch'Allah Dimanche | Marie-France Pisier, Fejria Deliba | Moving film

DVDs:

Inch'Allah Dimanche

	Inch'Allah Dimanche Marie-France Pisier, Fejria Deliba Film Movement, 2003 average customer review:based on 5 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

In the aftermath of World War 2, France attempted to replenish its weakened work force by recruiting men from North Africa. In the mid-1970's, the French government relaxed its immigration policy to allow the families of Algerian men to join them. Inch'Allah Dimanche provides us with a deeply moving memoir of the sense of isolation and vulnerability that the immigrant family experienced upon their arrival at a time when racial integration was virtually non-existent.

Zouina (Fejria Deliba in a richly emotional performance) is a woman who is torn from her home in Algeria. With her three children and her abrupt mother-in-law, Aicha (Rabia Modedem), she rejoins her husband in a foreign and unaccommodating land. She finds herself feeling imprisoned between a distant husband who scorns her, a hostile mother-in-law and a neighbor (a comedic France Darry) who is afraid of Fejria's otherness. But Zouina's finally begins to feel a sense of acceptance when she meets a cosmetics factory worker who sparks in Zouina an interest in French culture and her new world. This curiosity, and her longing for freedom and experience, drives Zouina to take secret excursions with her children on Sundays, the one day that her husband and mother-in-law are out of the house. Through these little adventures, she comes to terms with the difficulties of immigration, change, and adaptation to a new culture.

for more information click here

The finesse with which the Zouida is built is just beautiful.

Humans look for a peaceful dwelling on the earth. Homesickness is a characteristic of human existence. We belong to where we feel at home.

I must admit that there seems to be flaws in story and some problems with character development. However this originates from the nature of narrative style the director Yamina Benguigui prefers. You must have heard the literary writing style called "flow or stream of consciousness" to which James Joyce's "Ulysses" shown as an example. In the same manner, the film tells the story as a "flow of memories", most probably from a child's point of view. Reading an interview with Yamina Benguigui, I learn that the texture of the work is personal.

Childhood memories are sometimes clear and sometimes obscure. And a child's perception of the events is mainly based on images. So this explains the power and emotional impact of some scenes in the film: for ex. Zouida's breaking the window with bare hand. Or think of the old French couple's garden. They compete for the best garden award. On the other hand, the Algerian family's garden is chaotic. And the garden is not their own yet, the children can not play there as they wish. Around the symbolism of garden, we get a from-inside look at the emigrant psychology in its naive form through a child's eye.

The finesse with which the Zouida is built is just beautiful - she just shines. The movie is not stereotypical at all. The film also doesn't fall into the trap of making the ending happy and conclusive - at the end you're just left with a smile on your face and feeling like Zouida is actually somewhere out there living her life. The supporting actors are perfect, from the bus driver to the neighbors to the grocery store clerk. The pace of the movie is that of a lullaby - a still, sad, lullaby. This movie deserves all the praise.

for more information click here

Moving film

Inch'Allah Dimanche brings to life the experiences of an Algerian woman reunited with her husband in France. Although it is not fully representative in all aspects of an immigrant's life, the movie highlights certain problems of female immigrants. For instance, her feeling of isolation is well portrayed through her relationship with her neighbors and her family. This isolation, due to her role in the family, a language barrier and her homesickness, is one of the main themes in the film. Domestic violence is also portrayed in the relationship she has with her husband.
Not all Algerians live in the suburbs (which are a mixture of immigrants and working class French). The husband seemed to have a stable job and he had been living in France for the past 10 years. There is a possibility he created a financial base so that he could provide for his family.
I would say this is a must see. I would also like to recommend Esquive if anyone would like a good representation of adolescence in the suburbs.

for more information click here

God willing . . .

According to many accounts, this film portrays what is the reality of married life for many Muslim women - treated as something between a servant and a prisoner in their own home. Set in the 1970s, this film follows the experience of an Algerian woman, who with her three young children and mother-in-law joins her husband, a guest worker in France. Forced to remain at home rather than be exposed to the corrupting influences of the world outside, she is brow-beaten by her mother-in-law and physically beaten for perceived lapses from the rigid expectations of her husband. Nonetheless, at risk to life and limb, she seizes brief opportunities to escape from home with her children in search of another Algerian family she has heard of in the neighborhood.

Actress Fejira Deliba is wonderful in the role of the wife, Zouina. Beleaguered at home, she is undefeated and reaches out to the alien culture around her, listening to game shows and talk shows on the radio, and making friends with two French women, one of them a neighbor who brings her contraband in the form of cosmetics. A third woman, who lives next door, is obsessed with her showcase backyard garden and together with her husband introduces a farcical element in an otherwise disturbing portrayal of domestic abuse. And as other reviewers have noted, the fantasy ending does nothing to dismiss the dismay and anguish in Zouina's growing realization of her actual situation.

for more information click here

Important But Not Very Enjoyable...

This film seemed intriguing, because it was supposed to deal with the issues of immigration, integration and the plight of women, so I rented it. It was not a bad film, but I cannot say that I really enjoyed it. Characters were one-dimensional and not well-developed. Zouina was obviously the victim and I felt sorry for her, but she was not a very likeable person. She seemed to be cold, aloof and emotionally constricted, and have little regard for anyone else as a result - perhaps she was supposed to be that way because of her assigned role and misery. Except when she met another Algerian woman - it seemed that the two instantly became as close as two people who have known each other for ages, at least until the other Algerian woman figured out why Zouina came by. I found it very surprising that all these French people around her - like the missing colonel's wife, bus driver, Nicole and even the grocery store clerk - liked her so much and took such an interest in her, even before getting to know her and her situation. With the exception of the gardener neighbors, the elderly couple, who were understandably suspicious (they were not xenophobic, by the way), the local French residents seemed especially well-disposed and welcoming. Some of the details in the plot did not make much sense to me - maybe there is a cultural disconnect here. For example, why did Zouina, who was generally very obedient, stripped to her undergarments and fought the neighbor lady over the soccer ball? Why did she bring home the corpse of the dog, which belonged to the missing colonel's wife? Why did she throw out the damaged makeup and cosmetics on the street - is it to attract Nicole's attention (as it happened, Nicole was just walking by), or is it an Algerian custom to dispose of the garbage that way? Finally, however lonely and desperate she was, what could she have expected from another Algerian family? I sympathize with the plight of women in Africa, Asia and the Middle East and I think that there should be more films like this one. I wish that the characters were a bit more sympathetic and understandable, however. Films like this should bring us, people of different backgrounds, closer together and help us to re-discover the things that we all have in common. I would like to be of help to someone like Zouina but (as much as I hate to admit it), after watching this film, I would not want to be neighbors with that particular family, even without that monster of a mother-in-law.

for more information click here

products you might be interested in