Rachida
Picture: C+
Sound: B- Extras: C+ Film: B-
Another interesting installment in the new Global Lens
Collection series of international feature film releases from developing
countries is Yamina Bachir-Chouiku’s Rachida (2002), a disturbing tale
about a gang working with terrorists (or being terrorists) who try to coax the
title character (Ibtissem Djouadi) to taking a device to school. She is a teacher and the device is a weapon
of mass destruction. When she refuses
on the spot, they shoot her on site.
She somehow survives, but the emotional scars and the
problems with trying to go on with her life when the world around her is such a
wreck stay constant. This takes place
in Algeria in the 1990s and the way the terrorism resurges throughout the film
will remind you of films like Osama (reviewed elsewhere on this site)
and Hotel Rwanda in showing how ugly genocide, ethnic cleaning and
states of terror continue to ruin millions of innocent lives worldwide. Rachida is not up to the other films,
but is still a fine, smart little film that shows yet another side, place and
face to such situations and the awful truths they carry. This was Chouiku’s feature film debut and
that it comes from Algeria for so many reasons is remarkable.
Also a well acted work that she wrote and edited, it does
have a distinct female prospectus that helps the film. It is just she may be assuming some
knowledge on the part of the audience the film needed to have more within its
content. Yet, it is still good filmmaking,
especially under the circumstances, that deserves to be seen at least once.
The letterboxed 1.85 X 1 image has some good color, if not
fine detail. Mustapha Belmihoub’s
cinematography is pretty good, capturing the locations consistently and smoothly
throughout. You always feel there and
often feel trapped in the situations that keep springing up, yet it makes
Algeria look good and for real, taking us to a place we have not really been to
before. The Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo
has Pro Logic surrounds and sounds good, with a music score by Anne-Olga De
Pass that does not overdo it. The two
are a good match that makes watching the film more involving. Extras include two PDF files in a DVD-ROM
section: a director’s interview & a discussion guide. All players can access the pieces on the
2004 and 2005 Global Lens series, and text on the director (biography and
statement on the film very much worth reading) and a Film In Context
piece that talks about the history of Algeria and the crisis grossly underreported
in the U.S. media.
- Nicholas Sheffo
