Film Review: ‘Wadjda’ Captures Story of Memorable Young Heroine

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HollywoodChicago.com Oscarman rating: 3.5/5.0
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CHICAGO – Haifaa Al-Mansour’s “Wadjda” is a deceptive film. It feels like a relatively slight story in that it’s about a headstrong girl who wants a bike. That’s it. Pretty simple stuff. And yet it’s not simple at all in Wadjda’s part of the world. She is a 10-year-old Saudi girl and not only are Saudi girls not supposed to ride bikes, they’re not supposed to even show their faces if men could possibly be in their line of sight. With a strong breakthrough performance at its core, “Wadjda” is a film about how cultural and social revolution starts quietly in neighborhoods and homes where girls want to ride bikes.

Wadjda’s mother (Reem Abdullah) works hard, forced to ride in a car with broken air conditioning for hours just to makes ends meet as Wadjda’s father (Sultan Al Assaf) is absent for weeks at a time. It’s unclear the extent of the relationship between Wadjda’s parents and part of it could be cultural confusion but her father is regularly gone and it feels like her mother is still courting him to be the partner with whom he eventually settles down. Wadjda’s mother also clearly has not given her daughter as traditional of an upbringing as some others. We first see her listening to pop music, making mix tapes – an activity that already feels like a bit of gender revolution.

StarRead Brian Tallerico’s full review of “Wadjda” in our reviews section.

As she walks to school, Wadjda plays with a local boy named Abdullah (Abdullrahman Al Gohani), who teases her and tries to take her food, as kids do around the world when they really like each other. Wadjda sees a bike at a local store that she wants to buy to beat Abdullah in racing around the neighborhood. Girls like Wadjda don’t ride bikes and don’t have the money to buy new ones. And there are few ways in this society for her to get the money that would be culturally approved. She begins to run some schemes at school, avoiding the repercussions of Ms. Hussa (Ahd), a woman forced to enforce gender-based restrictions who one senses sees a little bit of her younger self in Wadjda anyway.

Wadjda realizes that the prize money at a school competition based on who knows their Koran the best could pay for the bike. That storytelling conceit alone is pretty brilliant. Wadjda will use knowledge of the tenets of her religion and culture to get what her religion and culture deny her.

StarContinue reading for Brian Tallerico’s full “Wadjda” review.

“Wadjda” stars Waad Mohammed, Reem Abdullah, Abdullrahman Al Gohani, Ahd, and Sultan Al Assaf. It was written and directed by Haifaa Al-Mansour. It opens in Chicago on September 20, 2013.

Wadjda
Wadjda
Photo credit: Sony Pictures Classics

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