Tangier marks the intersection between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean sea, what a fitting metaphor for a country caught between the tumultuous waves of modernity and the stillness of traditions. Rock the Casbah... I guess.
In a luxurious Ryad (Moroccan villa), Moulay Hassan died and in one of the film's nicest touches, it's his very voice that starts the narration: the voice is unmistakable, it belongs to Omar Sharif... in his swan song. Funerals last three days in the Islamic tradition, allowing all family members, friends and distant ones to come pay their respects, honor the dead and meditate about life and death. Hassan left behind him a wife and four daughters, one who actually died before him. A new version of Dr. March.
Laila Marrakchi's second feature starts so well that you wish the film could live up to its poetic premise. But storytelling has its conventions and following the unity of time, place and action, the first act establishes the characters. The widow Aicha (Hiam Abbas) wants Yacout, the maid (Raouia, best actress in the cast) to leave the house after the funerals. The hostility suggests that the old man she so idealizes wasn't exactly the straight-laced type. We get it, there's a secret to be unveiled and Yacout will NOT leave the house.
Marrakchi is a competent director but ever since "Marock", subtlety has never been her strongest suit. To her defense, that's a symptom of Moroccan cinema where a by-the-book directing makes interactions look staged and even the best acting of the world sounds unnatural: characters talk in turn, with a one-second lapse between each line or reaction shot. Even a good scene feels 'forced' or clichéd. The actresses who play the three sisters are good but it's precisely because they are limited to archetypes that we never feel a genuine bond beyond the prewritten complicity between them, not in joy, nor in anger.
Only the badass grandma (of course, she's smoking) (Assia Bentria) emerges from the cast, along with the maid. By the way, I'm sure she was inspired by the grandmother in "Persepolis". But let's get back to the film.
The three sisters are privileged and modern women who question their life accomplishments. Morjana Alaoui (the heroine of "Marock" at 30) is Sofia, an actress who made it to Hollywood... to play terrorists. She married an American and comes home with her English-speaking son. She's still the closest to a success in the family. I wanted to like her but then she had that condescending tone with the passport controller. Was is the grief or just the typical arrogance of the spoiled Moroccans who know they can get away with everything because they have the connections.
Lubna Azabal is the nicest one, she's a teacher, married, with children, she's more of a tampon between Sofia and Miriam, the rebel one, played by Nadine Labaki. Miriam's establishing moment shows her examining her 'new' breasts and get a beer on the fridge. That's feminism reduced to its lowest denominator and I'm not sure it serves the cause, anyway, once the three sisters get together, no interaction goes beyond soap-opera level, each line designed to blame each other or throw a cool quip that will shock the prude ears at the risk of sounding totally unnatural during the first day of the funeral.
Even in this unlikability contest, a plot is much needed but instead, the story is merely a skewer to hold every piece of social commentary like so many pieces of kebab. Girls can only smoke and drink in privacy (or specific areas), marital laws have passed; a woman must give her consent if her husband wants to marry a second woman, prohibiting poligamy would infuritate religious organizations, but a woman still inherits half of her brother's share... Laila Marralchi's film provides an update to one who wants to know the situation of women in 2013.
And since 2013, I resisted watching the film. Maybe because I felt I watched it already with the trailer, the premise, the title and the scene with the three sisters talking about sex in a grocery store. That scene, obviously the shocker like the praying scene in "Marock", turned me off. First, it wasn't plausible, even guys wouldn't dare talk like that and even if they did, I'm a kind of 'Walt Kowalski' on that matter, I don't find any exhilaration in the liberty of talking about sex and breasts whether in a market or a funeral, Tangier or Cophenagen. Maybe there could have been a context to make this acceptable but there wasn't. The nice touch was the female veiled cashier scolding them. Marrakchi is good sport and show that women can be their worst enemies. I wish she could also show that a rich girl isn't entitled to speak about her own freedom since in the very context of Morocco, money can buy freedom.
But Marrakchi was so eager to to break as many taboos as possible the script feels overwritten and underwritten at the same time. Noticing an erection on a dead body was a funny bit, having grandchildren discovering erotic pictures had nothing to do there. Making the uncle a greedy man who wants his share of the heritage was enough, but implying that he physically abused Miryam and letting him go away with it at the end, made no sense. Then there's a subplot about Yacout's son (Adel bencherif) caling back our intiial suspicion, and a romance with the sister who died. Finally, there's the Grandpa quitely talking with his grandson. But then why is his ghost present but not his daughter?
Still, as imperfect as it is, the film gives the perfect epitaph to Omar Sharif who leaves us one of his best peformances. Telling us not to make a woman cry because God counts tears. Thanks, Laila Marrakchi... for allowing one man's perspective to shine above the mess (although he's the one behind).
