Divines (2016)

the audience applauded

How sad is this?

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

Winner of the 2016 Audience Award for New Auteurs at AFI Fest, DIVINES is a feature film loaded with emotion that pivots from one side of the spectrum to the other. It is not a coming of age story but rather, a story about two girls that are best friends and the lead's, Dounia, conflict of her soul. Director Hounda delivers a touching piece of cinema that blurred my emotion of how I feel about the lead character played by Oulaya Amamra. The protagonist's circumstances and choices make for a masterful narrative story that ultimately leaves you feeling the characters emptiness and guilt.Dounia is an ambitious girl who lives in a gypsy camp in Paris with her mother, who is considered the camp slut. The fact that she is a bastard child, affects her temperament when she is amidst her peers. This is a burden that Dounia carries around with her that shapes her attitude and choices. The only person in her life that brings light and joy is her friend Maimouna. With ties to her Islamic faith, Maimouna is positioned to have better sense than Dounia. However, paired together their childlike wonder and fantasy of becoming rich is enough to lure them into participating in a world of licentious behavior.Hounda's directing, clever scene selection and storytelling through the lens, created the opportunity for me to participate in Dounia's and Maimouna childlike wonder. Throughout the film I am constantly changing my mind on how I feel about the two friends. Credit to Hounda use of cleaver devices in her narrative story telling in particular the cinematography. Accompanied by brilliant acting from Oulaya. Hounda sister in real life, Hounda visuals brought me in when the girls were fantasizing about driving a Ferrari. She successfully captured their childlike wonder that allowed me to imagine alongside the characters as if I was a child riding in the car with them. This creative storytelling provided me the opportunity to care for the girls despite their wicked and edacious actions.The pacing of the film is superb doubling down on Dounia's disturbed circumstances and poor decision making motivated by disease only money could cure. I often found my emotion being teeter- tottered. On one side, my inner child wants Dounia and Maimouna to succeed in obtaining the riches they desire, even through indecent means. On the other end of the spectrum, Hounda pulls me back to reality through the unfolding of each scene. The harsh reality of Dounia's choices surrounded by the reality of a young girl involved in street life and her motivation of easy virtue slowly pulled me back ultimately lead me to judge the character as immoral.In the end I was left feeling empathy for the characters. This narrative is a great example to me that fairy tales don't come true. The happy ending presented for Dounia was just that a fairy tale. Her choices fueled by her ambition for money lead her down all the wrong paths that striped her of her essence. The characters motivation provided her heart and soul with meaning but ended up being the very thing that left her heartless and empty in the end.

I really wasn't expecting this to be so good, thinking it to be a Netflix Original, but upon further investigation, I see that they just bought the film, after it was shown at Cannes. The trailer on YouTube is rather vulgarly emblazoned with the Netflix logo.All that nonsense aside, "Divines" is a top-notch thriller, immersing the viewer in the ethnic diversity of the suburbs of Paris. Gritty and compassionate. I hate to do the "this" meets "that" thing, but "Divines" has the intensity of "La Haine", "Sur les levres", "Deepan", "A Prophet", and "Rosetta", without being derivative of any. Perhaps Houda Benyamina is a devotee of Jacques Audiard, but how could one criticize that?This is not really a movie about race; rather one that allows us (I'm white) to transcend race, and imagine living a different life, at least for a part of two hours. Please watch it.

An incoherent review of emotions experienced after watching this movie:Every emotion is felt so strongly by the watcher. Dounya's story is one that many in the world have to live through. So unfair, so alone in her despair... A drunken mother whom she has to lay in bed, whom she has to see 'fucking' around. No father. No one to look to for guidance.. except for Rebecca - a fallen girl. It's impressive how D. defends herself and how she learns to protect herself. Self-pity isn't present. There's room only for survival. She has her mind set on the goal: money - which she mistakes for freedom. This is her downfall. To refuse to let anyone through her iron shell of emotions and "unfairness" is to refuse the escape of this life she (and so many others) is stuck in. From an artistic point of view, this movie is beautiful. A pure reflection of life itself. The images and the music are real. The movie is honest and certainly deserves true attention.

This is a welcome sight. This is not an easy one. Scene after scene, the characters, the settings, the relationship, each and every element comes in your face with incredible strength; from classroom argument to daughter-mother interaction, nothing is easy and nothing doesn't hurt. And for all that, the movie still manages to be fun, to make you laugh (albeit often at someone's painful expenses). Praise must of course go towards the main character, surprisingly multifaceted, rich and intense in about any moment of the film. She will draw you into her hopes, values and experience, her very own; morals, logic, conventions be damned! The talent from the young cinematographer at work here is to project all this with that incredible force; you will be happy when the characters are, you will cry when they do. And you will hope with them of a better tomorrow, however twisted. The synopsis here doesn't do justice to the scenario, this is much more about survival, and progress, only with the meagre supply of solutions and resources available to the heroes where they where born, in the limited scope of perspectives such life can offer them. They will not accept their fate, they will fight it, and we will be entranced by them.