As bombs fall in Damascus, a father refuses to relinquish his role as custodian and provider in Soudade Kaadan’s Nezouh, a film brimming with good ideas but lacking the filmmaking wherewithal to make it work. As with her uneven debut The Day I Lost My Shadow, winner of Venice’s 2018 Lion of the Future, the director-writer plays with a gentle form of magic realism, and while there’s no denying some lovely moments here too, her characters speak as if on a theater stage, while the dun-colored visuals lack texture or differentiation. In addition, Kaadan’s scrupulous avoidance of coming down on one side or the other in Syria’s civil war can be seen as problematic: the specificity of the conflict and the family dynamics preclude the notion that she’s aiming for universal appeal. BFI and Film 4 funding guarantee some kind of UK release, but further travel apart from festival berths will be an uphill road.
“Nezouh” is an Arabic noun for displacement, of a soul, of water, of people, as the opening titles explain, and in the film the concept is meant to encompass the first and last of those definitions. 14-year-old Zeina (Hala Zein) is the last of four daughters to remain in the familial nest provided by her parents, Motaz (Samir Almasri) and Hala (Kinda Aloush). The Civil War has destroyed much of the neighborhood but their building remains intact and Motaz continues to behave like the shepherd of his female flock, refusing to entertain the notion of becoming one of those “displaced” people whose flight, to him, implies weakness.
Zeina occasionally escapes into a fantasy world, but reality keeps finding a way of smashing her reveries until finally a bomb literally blows holes (in slow-mo) in the ceilings and walls of their apartment. Motaz doubles down on his assertion that everything will be fine, but Hala is beginning to rebel, more concerned with protecting her last remaining child than with maintaining the illusion of a contented family life. As an audience we’d feel more invested in this nucleus if we believed in them: Motaz is a caricature of an over-protective Muslim father, and Hala’s leap from obedient, not very bright wife and mother to a woman with a modicum of gumption isn’t convincing. While they gaze in disbelief at their shattered apartment, we can practically see the offscreen fans blowing white dust in just the right direction to artfully fill the screen.
Motaz’s solution is to cover the gaping holes with bed sheets and pretend like everything’s dandy, even ordering his wife to put on a hijab because the sole remaining neighbors might glimpse her uncovered, to their eternal shame. Zeina increasingly slips into a dream world, doodling on the walls and in her fantasy skipping pebbles across a sky she mentally transforms into the sea. Then her classmate Amer (Nizar Alani) appears on the roof, sending down a knotted rope for her to climb through the hole in her ceiling so they can look at the stars and play with the equipment he’s inherited from a local media outlet that’s fled the city.
Amer is a stand-in for a new kind of Syrian male, sensitive, emotionally open and a potential partner rather than guardian to the women in his life. Or at least that’s how he’s initially presented, but then just when Hala and Zeina – the two women – are finally ready to break free from the patriarchal dead-weight in their lives, Kaadan changes Amer’s purpose from being a Gen Z paragon of non-threatening, empathetic masculinity to another caretaker who leads the “weaker sex” out of the bombed-out neighborhood and into a potentially better life.
Even more of an issue is the clumsy handling of the family dynamics, which never once feels natural: we’re never persuaded this is a couple who’ve raised four daughters together. At least the safe haven Amer creates for Zeina on the roof has more resonance, and the director makes nice use of the gaping hole in the girl’s bedroom, which becomes a portal into a (temporary) safe space. Nezouh means to say inspiring things about the resilience of the female spirit, but it very rarely manages to get there because it’s so often hamstrung by half-successful attempts at delivering magical moments, like Zeina floating in a Big Dipper sky. There’s also a problem with its wishy-washy politics: though Kaadan herself escaped the Asaad regime, her films avoid statements that might place her on one side or the other, undercutting any meaningful critique.
Much of the film was shot in the ruined sections of the Turkish city of Gaziantep, filling in for a half-destroyed modern Damascus. Indoor lighting is understandably meant to be penumbral given the lack of electricity, and yet the overall flatness of the visuals, even in the fantasy sequences, means there’s little on-screen to capture our imagination.
Director: Soudade Kaadan
Screenplay: Soudade Kaadan
Cast: Hala Zein, Kinda Aloush, Samir Almasri, Nizar Alani, Darina Al Joundi, Nabil Abousalih, Samer Seyyid Ali, Sonia Bittarova, Muhammed Saleh Kadiko, Hamza Sadik, Abdullah Zafir, Firas Ibrahim, Mustafa Assu, Zekeriya Urfali, Ahmad Alheb
Producers: Yu-Fai Suen, Soudade Kaadan, Marc Bordure
Executive producers: Daniel Battsek, Ben Coren, Farhana Bhula, Lizzie Francke, Donna Gigliotti, Peter Luo, Alaa Karkouti
Co-executive producers: Eric Chen, Yuan Zhang
Co-producers: Nancy Xu, Lizzy Yang Liu
Cinematography: Helene Louvart, Burrak Kanbir
Production designer: Osman Özcan
Costume designer: Selin Sözen
Editing: Soudade Kaadan, Nelly Quettier
Music: Rob Lane, Rob Manning
Sound: Thomas Robert, Paul Davies
Production companies: Berkeley Media Group (UK), KAF Production (UK), in association with Ex Nilho (Paris)
World sales: mk2 films
Venue: Venice Film Festival (Orizzonti Extra); London Film Festival (competition)
In Arabic
103 minutes
