Shéhérazade

The film nails its colours to the mast right at the beginning. We see immigrants from Algeria arriving in France (not a hijab in sight), the slums and shanty towns they are lodged in after their arrival and then the dreadful council flats and tower blocks finally provided to them. I've seen this type of place in the cités (ghettos) - huge structures teeming with crime, drugs and violence. It's a vicious circle as employers won't even employ someone with an address in the ghetto so there is no way out except for crime.

I speak good French, but I had to watch this with subtitles; the accents were authentic as was the slang and I'm too old to keep up with that these days and French from Marseilles is different from what I learnt in Paris and the north. I just caught half of what the kids were saying. The only scenes I could follow completely were in court or with the examining magistrate when the officials were speaking in "correct" French and the youth attempting to do so. So, for anyone who is not French or who hasn't been living in France for many years, I'd advise the subbed version despite some of the nuances being untranslatable.

The kids reflect the chaos of their upbringing and where they grew up, but there is an added, unpleasant element, namely the admixture of perversions of religion, particularly Islam, added to the equation. Girls are despised especially if they are not virgins and if they are prostitutes, they are beyond the pale and fair game for anyone. Gays and transvestites are worse and Zach justifies his revulsion of tranny Zelda by referring to god. It's a complete dichotomy because these kids are shown as totally amoral in other contexts yet they stick to a twisted set of religious values when it suits them and they clearly don't know the true values that Islam espouses.

The feeling of the film is one of drift. They drift through life, Zach drifts into pimping, they drift into and out of relationships. Money, although it's the cause of the criminality seems almost incidental at times - what's it for? It's just to be blown on expensive presents, nights out or flash vehicles. Their lives are lives of reaction. They react to the Bulgarians, Zach reacts to what happened to Schéhérazade, he reacts to the insults after the court case. There's no direction in these young lives.

It's an entirely bleak vision but one that held the attention. The running time was longish but I wasn't bored for an instant. There were moments of real tension when I was on the edge of my seat and, honestly, my heart beat a bit faster on occasion. I had had this film for a month or so before watching and I should have seen it before, it was that good. I'd recommend this strongly.