Word: charef
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Directed by Mehdi Charef...
...Harem about? There isn't really a plot. There isn't much witty dialogue. You just watch two boys live. It's beautiful. And it makes you wonder why Americans need lots of flashy color, bitchy one-liners and stereotyped characters to make a movie, when Medhi Charef can make a film this powerful from a series of sensitive pictures and lifelike conversation...
...their homes that Charef succeeds in creating the most human and moving scenes. A picture of bustling, cheerful life on the surface of dire poverty and sickness invents completely the characters of Madjid's family and makes the audience care about them. Madjid's mother, Maika, bubbles over with the life-force that feeds and clothes her five young children, Madjid and the neighbor's child, as well as taking care of her husband, who has apparently had a stroke that has rendered him helpless. The contrast between Maika's helathy cheer and her husband's thin and trembling weakness...
...most chilling aspect of poverty, according to this film, is not Pat and Madjid's cheerful delinquency, ripping off wealthy tennis club locker rooms or stealing chocolate from the local store. Instead, Charef conveys the desperate permanence of poverty through a series of minor female characters who see prostitution as the only escape from their condition...
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