Wadjda

Seen at The Station Cinema in Richmond, North Yorkshire

Bea says: I was expecting a film outraged - and that would make me feel outraged - about the limitations of being female in a Middle Eastern country.  Instead, this is a lovely, whimsical film largely about childhood. The young heroine, Wadjda, is a slightly tomboyish girl in the earlier years of a strict girls' high school with an intimidating headmistress who is always on the prowl looking for girls who are doing things they shouldn't.

So far, so familiar - I read countless novels with this theme when I was Wadjda's age.  Sure, the girls in the novels didn't wear a hijab niqab or burkha, but they did have to wear a uniform correctly, and were frequently hauled to the headmistress's office for not wearing a slip or some such transgression.

Wadjda has a boy who is her friend in the neighbourhood.  He goes to a different school, but they play together sometimes - and he wants to marry her.  Again, so far, so familiar - I had friends like this at Wadjda's age too, and many proposals!

Wadjda's friend rides a bike.  Wadjda wants to too, so a large part of the film is focussed on the bike that she regularly visits at the local toy shop to gaze longingly at, and her efforts to earn enough pocket money to buy it.  When I was 11, I gazed longingly at a pair of knee high brown boots in a local shoe shop as often as I could (I was rather less of a tomboy than Wadjda!), and saved my pocket money diligently - until I received them for my birthday!  Similarly, Wadjda is gifted the bike.

The adult women in her life shake their heads and scold that it is not seemly for girls to ride bikes, but it does not appear to be expressly forbidden, as Wadjda learns to ride and eventually rides her own bike with her friend (a metaphor for freedom, and equality, in the film, methinks?)

We do see some of the difficult circumstances that women experience in the film, albeit filtered through Wadjda to some extent - her mother's difficult journey to her teaching post, as she is she not permitted to drive herself there; having to provide food for the men visiting the house by leaving it outside the living room door rather than be seen by them, and her mother's painful experience of infertility following Wadjda's birth and hence being set aside while her husband and his family search for another wife to provide him with a son.
Indeed, it is with money set aside for a new dress to tempt her husband that Wadjda's mother buys the bike - again rather symbolic.

So perhaps the key theme of this gently thought-provoking film is about change, as a new generation of bike riding tomboys, supported by their mothers, grows up - perhaps there is a different life waiting for them?

***.5


Cecil says: What can I say? Again, Bea has said it all really.

I wouldn't even see Wadjda as particularly tomboyish personally. She's just a kid who wants to have fun in life and has the strength of purpose to make self-sacrifices (spending hours learning the Koran) in order to win the prize that will buy her that bike she wants.

What's fantastic about this film is knowing that it was made by a woman film director Haifaa Al-Mansour, who had at times to direct from inside some caravan or other on the set because male actors weren't allowed to see her. And yet, in spite of this, she has made a light-hearted, carefree film that is just a joy to watch.

It is thought-provoking, for sure, but it doesn't descend into the kind of angry rant that we in the west might think Saudi women SHOULD be expressing at the outrageous restrictions on their lives. And there was no shortage of tut-tutting and disapproval from some in the audience where we watched it (in Yorkshire)...

I noticed that this weekend Saudi women did hold a protest over the rules that stop them from driving. Good for them! And may they win their battle quickly.

But it's not right for us in the developed west to tell them how to achieve change in their societies, or even what change to aim for.

I think Wadjda did a great job going for her own goals. And Al-Mansour too in making this film.

We don't HAVE to be angry to achieve change...

***.5