The Source (2011)
La source des femmes (2011)
DVD5 Custom | VIDEO_TS | PAL 16:9 | 01:59:38 | 4,37 Gb
Audio: Arabic AC3 2.0 @ 192 Kbps | Subs: Greek; added - English, French, Spanish, Portuguese
Genre: Comedy, Drama
DVD5 Custom | VIDEO_TS | PAL 16:9 | 01:59:38 | 4,37 Gb
Audio: Arabic AC3 2.0 @ 192 Kbps | Subs: Greek; added - English, French, Spanish, Portuguese
Genre: Comedy, Drama
The location is a small remote village, somewhere between North Africa and the Middle East. Since the dawn of time, the women of this village have been forced to go and fetch water from a spring high in the mountains, under a blazing sun. But now they have decided to take a stand. Leila, a young bride, gathers the women of the village together and persuades them they should go on a love strike. They will deny their husbands their conjugal rights unless they agree to fetch the water in their place…
IMDB
Romanian-born filmmaker Radu Mihaileanu offers up another certifiably crowd-pleasing slice of world cinema in The Source (La Source des Femmes), a modern-day fable exploring female empowerment in the Arab world. Never one for subtlety, the writer-director tosses everything he can into this two-hour-plus humanist couscous, stirring in a mix of songs, sentiments and socio-religious questions set beneath breathtaking North African landscapes, and carried by a strong central performance from actress Leila Bekhti. Like his previous films, The Source boasts an Arthouse for Beginners appeal that could reach broad audiences beyond Europe.
The Source (2011)
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A mixed reaction at the first Cannes press screening is telling of how Mihaileanu (The Concert, Live and Become) tends to split viewers, with some appreciating his heartwarming (and often tear-jerking) cross-cultural tales, and others wondering whether he deserves the auteur status of the Official Selection’s usual suspects.
Certainly, the fact that the script (co-written with collaborator Alain-Michel Blanc) deals with such a timely subject matter as women and Islam will make the film a talking point when EuropaCorp releases it in France this coming November. Still, despite what can be deemed a rather earnest call for females to rise up and (literally) take off the veil, there’s an unwieldy, bordering-on-kitsch side to Mihaileanu’s storytelling here, and the mix of colorful local customs and swelling, Middle East-influenced scoring (by Armand Amar, Outside the Law) tends to walk the line between a soap opera and an advertisement for Royal Air Morocco.
The Source (2011)
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At its best when it concentrates on solid acting from a talented cast toplined by rising star Bekhti (All that Glitters), the film presents a universally simplistic parable set in an unnamed contemporary Maghreb village, whose women decide they no longer want to fetch water from a nearby well while their men sit around and watch. Given that Leila (Bekhti), Loubna (Hafsia Herzi) and the loud mouth, Mother Rifle (Biyouna), have very little persuasion over the macho, Koran-quoting males who control the remote enclave, they resort to the Power of the P, which in due course drives their husbands mad with sexual starvation.
The Source (2011)
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As an outsider married to the town’s sole intellectual, Sami (Israeli actor Saleh Bakri, The Time that Remains), Lelia suffers the wrath of an evil mother-in-law and other traditionalists who believe a wife’s place is beside the hearth and nowhere else. When an old flame (Malek Akhmiss) pops up unannounced, he drives a wedge between Sami and Lelia that spills over into the greater struggle for the townswomen to have their way at all costs, leading up to a final, free-spirited battle pitting feminist yearnings against Muslim mores.
The Source (2011)
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Trying to hold this mixed bag together is not always easy, and rather than building a steady dramatic arc, Mihaileanu piles on a succession of scenes, some which delight through their humor and energy, others which disappoint through schmaltzy emotions and a tendency towards dialogue in which every character wears their heart on their djellaba. Thus, a subplot involving the illiterate Loubna’s love for a local boy has the sophistication level of an after-school movie, while a few scenes where the women sing caustic songs (one to a group of ignorant tourists) provide an entertaining example of how they can wage war on their own terms.
The Source (2011)
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Between the vivid, mountainous backdrop and array of radiant costumes, director of photography Glynn Speeckaert (In the Beginning) has plenty of eye-candy to capture with his constantly roving camera, and the attractive imagery helps some of the more cloying medicine go down easily. That, and the sheer vitality of all the players – including ever-amusing Algerian actress Biyouna (Viva Algeria) – manage to give Mihaileanu’s vision a lure that rises above and beyond his more facile, and some would say naive, approach to an issue that one wishes could be solved so smoothly.
The Source (2011)
Having scored a palpable hit with his 2009 comedy Le Concert - a light-hearted look at the implications of Stalinism - Romanian-born director Radu Mihaileanu champions the cause of global feminism in his equally irreverent follow-up, La Source des femmes. Inspired partly by Aristophanes’ war of the sexes comedy Lysistrata and partly by a real-life incident that took place in Turkey in 2001, the film follows the fortunes of a group of women in a remote (unspecified) village in the Middle East as they rebel against their men folk and demand a better way of life in exchange for marital privileges. Coming in the wake of the Arab Spring (note the pun), the film has the advantage of being highly topical, but Mihaileanu’s tendency to over-egg the pudding and resort to well-worn clichés prevents him from saying anything particularly profound or original.
The Source (2011)
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On the plus side, the film is beautifully filmed, making effective use of its stunning North African location, and features some highly talented actresses, notably Hafsia Herzi and Leïla Bekhti, who had previously distinguished themselves respectively in Abdel Kechiche’s La Graine et le mulet (2007) and Hervé Mimran and Géraldine Nakache’s Tout ce qui brille (2010). Mihaileanu’s penchant for extracting humour from the unlikeliest situations is also very much in evidence, although here the comedy tends to work against the subject of the film and undermines the wider social messages that are struggling to make themselves felt.
The Source (2011)
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La Source des femmes is a film that is easy to engage with and a well-meaning attempt to arouse our concern for a subject of universal importance, namely the exploitation and subjugation of women by the male sex. The problem is that it is a satire without teeth and it leaves you feeling that it has failed to say anything of any substance. Whilst it is entertaining and does stir the conscience a little, the film is just to amiable and mealy mouthed for its own good. Mihaileanu’s reluctance to arouse controversy is presumably what led him to set the film in the abstract, to tell an obviously contrived tale in an unnamed location rather than attach it to events in the real world (which is extraordinary given that it is based on a real incident). As in each of his previous films, Mihaileanu looks as if he is out of his depth or simply lacks the courage of his convictions to tell a story with real bite. Nonetheless, whatever shortcomings he may have as a serious auteur, Mihaileanu knows how to win an audience and once again he delivers a film that, whilst lacking in depth, is amply redeemed by its charm, humanity and cinematic grandeur.
The Source (2011)
Special Features:
- Interview with director on the occasion of film's release in Greece (9:41, in French with Greek subs)
- Trailer
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