'The Four Daughters': the wolf that ate two young women in the Oscar-nominated Tunisian documentary

The first words, spoken by a voice from outside, with the image in the background of a mature woman slightly out of focus and two young girls in the foreground, flanking the maternal figure, all three looking at the camera, are impressive: “In this film I will try to tell the story of Olfa's daughters.

Olfa has four daughters.

The two little ones, Eya and Tayssir, still live with her.”

Pause of about five seconds.

Change of shot: now it is the mother who is in the foreground, head down, body nervous, tense, with two female figures in the background: “The two oldest, Rahma and Ghofrane, were eaten by the wolf.”

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Summary of the best (and the worst) that has been seen in the official section of Cannes at the height of its equator

The Four Daughters,

a film by Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania, premiered in the official section of the Cannes Film Festival and a candidate for the Oscar for best documentary (although it is not exactly that in many ways), starts off like a shot.

Like one of those cruel traditional stories that have been passed down from generation to generation to warn children of the evils and dangers around them.

The one who speaks in

off-screen

is the director herself, who soon reveals her risky, almost unusual systematic narrative.

The two older sisters, swallowed by the wolf, will be played by two actresses.

Her mother, in the sequences in which the harshness of her memories can cloud her, will also be played by another professional.

Meanwhile, an actor will play several male roles throughout the story, including the girls' abusive father.

The three real people, the mother and the two young daughters, establish contact, conversations and even representations with the fictional ones.

Written like this, it can be difficult to understand.

Everything is understood on the screen.

Worse.

Because little or nothing works, at least in the first hour or so of footage.

The methodology, in theory, is brave and surprising.

In practice, it is close to disaster.

It may seem that there is a reflection on the representation of drama and tragedy on a screen, but there is none at all.

Just a kind of theater, meta-cinematic games in which uninhibited laughter and sincere cries over bad memories are mixed.

Moments full of redundancies between text and image.

Almost laughable rehearsals and pretenses, such as the actresses' refusal to “swear” in their recollection of the worst moments in the family home.

Trivializations, like the sequence in which they remember their past as

majorettes.

And, at the worst moment, some outtakes, with the male actor's mustache coming off amidst laughter.

The shape is eating into the background.

There is hardly any information: it takes a long time to know that they are Tunisian, and much longer to know the fate of the majors, which although it is revealed in most of the informative and critical texts about the production, and it is possible that you see it coming, here we find We will try to hide it because, after all, it is the best part of the work: the final half hour, in which everything comes together.

An image of 'The Four Daughters'.

The ambiguous attitude of the mother, also an abuser, is very suggestive in cinematographic terms: “I tore out a lock of her hair [by pulling] and beat her with sticks.

I crushed it!”

And the explanations about the process of political and religious radicalization, the attraction to the forbidden after the Arab Spring and the Jasmine Revolution, between 2010 and 2012, and the reappearance of the older sisters, in the den of the lion, cause the film Finally, take flight.

Even to the exciting point.

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Uneven in its results and suicidal in its ways,

The Four Daughters

is a roller coaster.

When it seems that there is nothing left but to hit the ground, it miraculously revives and can leave a certain residue.

But the first hour is infamous.

The four daughters

Director:

Kaouther Ben Hania.

Performers:

Hend Sabry, Ichrak Matar, Majd Mastoura, Eya Chikhaoui.

Genre:

documentary.

Tunisia, 2023.

Duration:

107 minutes.

Premiere: February 9.

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