Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
Director/co-writer: Radu Mihăileanu, Madman Entertainment.
Jewish Romanian-born French film director-screenwriter Mihăileanu (The Concert, Train of Life, Live and Become) holds the reins with consideration in this rather unusual story about a ‘love strike’.
Women in a remote village take some drastic action to protest over having to trek up a steep hill to fetch water from a spring: they go on strike with no more hugs and sex until the men pipe water to their rural community.
Sensitivities are set aside as this modern-day account examines female empowerment in the Arab world, together with humanist sentiments mingled with songs and socio-religious demands.
Set across undulating North African landscapes, it features a sturdy central performance from Leïla Bekhti as Leila. Other notable portrayals come from Hafsia Herzi as Loubna Esmeralda, Sabrina Ouazani as Rachida, Saleh Bakri as Sami, Hiam Abbass as Fatima and male actors Saleh Bakri, Mohamed Majd and Zinedine Soualem.
The womenfolk are determined to bring running water to their community, but are against having to fetch it from a distant well. Ever since anyone can remember, it’s the women who have had to trudge up the mountain – the rock-strewn path a precarious route – to bring back heavy pails of water from the local spring. Of course, the men do nothing, just sip their tea on a terrace, that is, until the women hit on the notion of a sex strike to force them to sort it out.
However, there’s uncertainty about whether the movie should be serious or funny … ending up being neither. The story, an adaptation of the ancient Greek comedy Lysistrata, is in French, Arabic Darija and English subtitles.