HIDEOUS KINKY (director: Gillies MacKinnon; screenwriter: Billy MacKinnon, based on the novel by Esther Freud; cinematographer: John de Borman; cast: Kate Winslet (Julia), Said Taghmaoui (Bilal), Bella Riza (Bea),Carrie Mullan (Lucy), Pierre Clémenti (Santoni), Abigail Cruttenden (Charlotte), Ahmed Boulane (Ben Said), Sira Stampe (Eva), Amidou (Sufi Sheikh), Michelle Fairley (Patricia), 1998-UK)
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
There must be some unwritten rule that states, one gets enlightenment not in the way one expects to get enlightenment but in the commitment given to seeking wisdom, even if it is a foolish road one is on and it seems to be leading nowhere. In the exotic Morocco of 1972, a 25-year-old English hippie mother, Julia (Winslet), of two sweet young girls, the 6-year-old Lucy (Carrie) and the 8-year-old Bea (Bella), has arrived for a year's stay, with the self-absorbed mother oblivious to how her daughters might be adjusting to this foreign experience while she is searching for a change of life from her unfaithful poet husband (she is not officially married to him) and her cold one-room London flat, and is sort of looking for the eternal truth in the sunny climate of Marrakech. At least she says she is, as she is making some attempt to contact a Sufi sheikh there who has all the answers. She has not planned things out too carefully, having no money, and the trip doesn't seem like it's much fun, more like a misadventure, with some romance with a local Moroccan thrown in.
Drugs, a world-wide youthful phenomena during this period, where many Westerners came to Morocco to smoke the good hashish found there and to live the 'good life' cheaply, and to be in a spot where they did not have to worry about being hassled by the local authorities, even though drugs are illegal there. But this is not shown as one of her reasons for being here. In this film, the subject of drugs is never broached, only hinted at in an off-handed but slurring way, as the hippie commune is shown in a negative light, strumming on their guitars and bragging about the hits of acid they have taken. Even the ones coming here for spiritual reasons, to follow the mystical Sufis, seem lost following a culture that is far different from where they were coming from.
The film is based on the novel that contained the autobiographical experiences of Sigmund Freud's grand-daughter, Esther Freud, who traveled here in the 1960s with her mother and sister. It is written by the director's brother, who has previously directed Regeneration, The Playboys, and Trojan Eddie.
The title of the film comes from the squealing giggles that saying hideous kinky gives the little girls.
With Julia strapped for cash and not receiving a needed check her husband often forgets to send her, she is prevented from seeing the greatest living Sufi who is located in Algeria; so instead, she meets an acrobat street performer in the bazaar, Bilal (Said Taghmaoui). He becomes her lover, taking the place of her husband as a father figure for the girls. The girls readily accept him, and there is no big-to-do made about their openly sexual relationship, but the girls really don't know what to make of the relationship. It especially bothers Bea, who is embarrassed by her mother's loose attitude and wants to go home. Things go surprisingly sour when Bilal takes them to stay in his small village. It seems only that Bilal's charm is matched by his shiftlessness, as he has a wife who still lives there. This scene didn't make too much sense as to why he would take them there knowing the situation, unless the uneducated man was totally uneducated in the customs of his people, also. But I doubt that.
The family is now stuck without money in a backward area trying to decide what to do next, as they hitch a ride away from there with a truck driver who nearly kills them when he falls asleep by the wheel. Lucy takes it all in stride and has a good disposition for travel, while Bea just wants to go to a school and learn something and be a 'normal' girl.
The beauty of Marrakech is matched by the terrific performance of Kate Winslet, as the film accurately encapsulates the timeless city and its bustling street scenes, expansive views, illustrious mosques, and grand sunsets. Kate enacts the feel of what it was like to be a Westerner, living out the countercultural experiences while awaiting to gather her sensibilities again and was fortunate enough to be able to go home the better off for her experiences, as many a drop-out reluctantly had to do after their stay ran out of money and purpose.
The background music from groups like America and Jefferson Airplane, provided further nostalgia for this easy to look at and easy to grasp film. The only hope was that the two innocent girls would not be permanently harmed while on this sojourn, a venture that should be reserved only for those of college age or older who choose to go there for themselves.
The family's travel, which is on the edge, has Julia waking up screaming from dreams that are bleakly haunting; but, when she gets up, all there is, is this splendid emptiness all around her and a vacuous life that is starting to bother her. That Marrakech is disarmingly gorgeous and that London is old hat to her, is starting to wear thin in her thoughts. It will dawn on her, when Bea takes ill, as she reflects on what the Sufi guru tells her, whom she finally meets and is driven to tears in his presence. He is the guru who replaced the one she wanted to see but who died before she got a chance to see him. The new guru is grounded in reality, something she is not grounded in, and seems to tell her what she couldn't comprehend from anyone else, even comforting her, by telling her that her tears are memories- a gift from God.
The film's weakness was the empty feeling I got from watching the story unfold in its risk free tenor (she was there basically to be just escaping from her situation) and how unappealing the love affair seemed between Bilal and Julia. The storyline about a helpless single parent, detracted from the vibrant experiences many others of her same baby-boom generation had during their trip to Morocco, who were taken in by the mystical culture of Sufism, a teaching that has a lot to offer its followers, contrary to the impression the film might give, seemed to pass her by. Her knowledge of that trip is only surface deep, at best. She perhaps would have been better off not taking the kids along, smoking some hashish, and have been less assured of herself but to have behaved more like a hippie and she wouldn't have been so uptight all the time and had some fun on her journey. After all, the mystical trip is the journey.
The film's strength is in how all the characters are shown for what they are, and no one is that good or that bad, or judged too harshly for their shortcomings. Bilal is unreliable but is capable of generosity. The little girls are precocious but they are lovable. Julia, the cornerstone the film is built on, is a mother who cares about the children but doesn't know how to take care of them without unintentionally harming them. She was trying to escape from reality and that by returning to London, she has another chance to see if she can find the key to this world or whatever world she is looking for and should no longer have nightmares about where she's at. This is a very Freudian way to look at things, as this sudden realization, that things are not right puts an an end to her Eastern hippie odyssey, at least, for the time being. And, after all is said and done, who's to say if the children are also not better off for surviving their experiences, just like she probably was!
REVIEWED ON 11/6/99 GRADE: B
Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"
http://www.sover.net/~ozus
ozus@sover.net
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