Few cinema experiences are as frustrating as when terrific images and exceptional performances are trounced by an infuriatingly misguided narrative.
The problem with Tunisian-American Meryem Joobeur’s feature debut, competing for the Golden Bear, isn’t that the drama is kept deliberately opaque, but that it’s so confused about what it wants to say. Set in a seaside Tunisian village, the film tells of a farming family whose two older sons run off to join Daesh; when one returns with a pregnant wife, the mother desperately tries to protect them. Shot with sensorial Malickian (visual and aural) sweep while pandering to the West’s fear of women in niqabs, Who Do I Belong To? toys with the audience’s perception yet gives them nothing but beautiful visuals and a maddeningly unformed central thesis disguised as impressionistic ambiguity.
Standouts here are relative newcomer Vincent Gonneville’s cinematography – he’s also worked with Joobeur on her shorts – and a fine mixed cast of professionals and amateurs. When Aicha (Salha Nasraoui) and Brahim (Mohamed Hassine Grayaa) attend a village wedding, they have no idea their two older sons Mehdi (Malek Mechergui) and Amine (Chaker Mechergui) have left home to become Daesh fighters in Syria. Aicha tries to hide it from her youngest son Adam (Rayen Mechergui) but he knows and the family is shattered, with mutual recriminations between husband and wife. Brahim throws himself into his work raising sheep and goats, while Aicha’s depression is all-consuming until one day when Medhi suddenly turns up with his niqab-wearing pregnant wife Reem (Dea Liane).
Had Joobeur done something with this woman apart from turning her into some kind of mysterious wraith, the film could have been an involving if unoriginal tale of a family unable to understand how their sons could have become terrorists. Instead, Reem is made into a mute cipher with wellsprings of pain visible in her eyeshadowed eyes whose smudges never change, though the meaningless plot twist at the end ostensibly explains why. There’s something almost Christological about her, exemplified when Aicha reaches out to feel her stomach and Mehdi says “don’t touch her,” like Jesus telling Mary Madgalene “Noli me tangere.” Is the wound in Aicha’s hand that won’t heal also meant as some kind of stigmata? There’s nothing Christian here and yet these confused notes crop up, further clouding the storyline, like when Reeme finds a broken sandal on the beach – why does Joobeur try to invest this moment with such consequence? Although we’re told Reem is not Muslim, her presumably Yazidi heritage isn’t mentioned at all, which erases the Yazidi genocide by not naming it.
A brooding depression settles over everyone except for Adam, who’s the one bright spot in the whole film. Reem starts roaming at night, her ghostly presence clad in an aubergine-colored burqa causing the farm animals to loudly bleat as if Nosferatu was wandering in their midst. At the same time, men in the village start to go missing and a frightened Adam asks family friend and local policeman Bilal (Adam Bessa, Harka) if he can stay at his place.
Blood imagery recurs throughout the film from the moment Aicha imagines blood in a coffee cup, to her own wound and on to crimson shrubs that add to the sense of dread without any satisfying payoff apart from their intrinsic beauty. This is one of the main problems with Who Do I Belong To?, overloaded with pregnant pauses accompanied by fine-looking images testifying to talent wasted on an ill-thought-out script. Why introduce a brief voiceover from Brahim seventy minutes into the film and then drop it just as quickly? The film’s division into chapters was likely meant to give it structure, yet this too feels random, and a flashback to what happened to Reem in Raqqa adds an unnecessary element of explicit violence.
Focusing on the performances alone fortunately helps mitigate some of the film’s significant issues, though the charismatic Bessa is wasted in a role that feels almost like an afterthought. Nasraoui’s commitment is total and her despair is affecting, made more so by the frequency of close-ups, but her character has no development. Equally impressive are the Mechergui brothers, shepherds discovered by Joobeur when scouting for her Oscar-nominated short Brotherhood, itself a kind of try-out for her feature; though non-professionals when first cast, their control and balanced intensity, as well as the younger boy Rayen’s palpable charm, at least testify to the success of the workshop process. If only the script had been equally shepherded.
Director, screenwriter: Meryam Joobeur
Cast: Salha Nasraoui, Mohamed Hassine Grayaa, Malek Mechergui, Adam Bessa, Dea Liane, Rayen Mechergui, Chaker Mechergui
Producers: Nadim Cheikhrouha, Sarra Ben Hassen, Annick Blanc, Maria Gracia Turgeon, Meryam Joobeur
Co-producers: Vincent Dupuis, Victor Lech, Baptiste Leroy, Ramsis Mahfoudh,
Dyveke Bjørkly Graver, Andrea Berentsen Ottmar
Cinematography: Vincent Gonneville
Production designer: Mohamed Ilyes Dargouth
Costume designer: Salah Barka
Editing: Maxime Mathis, Meryam Joobeur
Music: Peter Venne
Sound: Aymen Labidi, Gwennolé Le Borgne
Production companies: Tanit Films (France), Midi La Nuit (Canada), Instinct Bleu (Tunisia), 1888 Films (France), Godolphin Films (Tunisia), Eye Eye Pictures (Norway)
World sales: Luxbox
Venue: Berlinale (International competition)
In Arabic
117 minutes
