Divines (2016)

the audience applauded

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

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 never write reviews so take this one as a reason to must see this.This would have been an incredible book to read. I recently visited Paris and this movie really shed light on the crime rate that I hear so much about in the states. As a tourist, you don't experience that side of things. From the story line, to the actors, to the scenery, to the video quality this movie should easily rise to the top of the charts. My first language is English and I was skeptical at first with watching the entire movie reading the subtitles but surprisingly, I didn't even realize I had read the entire movie until the last minute. This film hooks you in with it's incredible versatility of both of the main actress in the film (Kudos to them). I would love to see more pieces by the writer.Incredible.

Hmmmm, a Golden Globe nomination for best foreign movie ?? Can't have been a good year for foreign movies. We have this girl living in a Roma camp in some Paris suburb, so we know this is a social drama. They add some social stereotypes around her, a slutty mother, a friend with very religious Muslim parents, a local gangster/drug dealer, (well, you get the drift i'm sure), all people with no real prospect of a future. On top of that we get a high-strung dramatic musical score that sets in occasionally to remind us that this is serious stuff, oh and a kind of romance between the girl and a dancer that doesn't really add to the plot, but merely serves as an excuse for some fancy camera footage of dancers, so we can cut back and forth between violent scenes and scenes with dancers in motion. Does that make it art ? Well it seems the Globe jury bought the premise, but in my opinion this movie is 90 % window dressing to cover the fact that it's not much of a story. The girl is obsessed with making a lot of money, but she's also completely clueless and goes from one stupid plan to another, without realizing that there might be consequences for her actions. And that's pretty much it. To me it seems like some new director straight out of film school, and determined to make an impression just piled a lot of clichés on top of each other and forgot that really great movies are driven by good stories.

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.