WAAD MOHAMMED IN WADJDA A girl who won't quit, in Saudi ArabiaWadjda is a feature about a feisty, competitive 10-year-old girl in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Araba. This film is delightful as well as amazing. It focuses on one of the world's most repressive societies, yet has a light, often humorous touch. The director adeptly uses the strategy of many Iranian filmmakers of showing touchy issues through a child-centered story. But there's none of the grimness or gloom of so much Iranian cinema. Al-Mansour, who comes from a small town, has said that the Kingdom is full of girls like this who are going to change society. The film works at once as consciousness-raising, collective autobiography, and motivation. But this doesn't seem a preachy story, so much as a series of little adventures into which the director has packed a multitude of her own and her friends' experiences of everyday Saudi life, with particular reference to its restrictions, on men as well as women. She does this breezily, all the while achieving a sublime naturalness and an air of rueful fun.
The story is simple. Begin with Waad Mohammed, 12, who plays Wadjda, a reedy but attractive tomboy in sneakers, exemplifying the casting that may have been restricted but nonetheless is spot-on. (Many girls would not have been permitted to act in a film, yet there are enough to make up a school.) Waad Mohammed simply
is Wadjda, spirited, spunky, secure in her own skin. Wajda attends a typical and strict school, made up only of girls, of course. However giggly and irrepressible, they are constantly admonished to be modest and restrained, not to sing, not to be seen. They are all dressed in black, their heads buried under a black cloth when they go on the street. The outgoing Wadjda probably shouldn't even play with the neighbor boy Abdullah (Abdullrahman Al Gohani), whom she does play with, every day. He teases her and steals her scarf, rushing off with it on his bike, but this is a friendship verging on kid romance. She chases after him. Their sparring leads Wadjda to challenge the boy to a bike race -- when she gets a bike. She soon spots a beautiful new green bike that arrives, wrapped in plastic, at a local shop. The filmmakers cunningly show it sailing along a fence on the top of a truck. It's priced at 800 riyals. "Too expensive for you!" says the shopkeeper when she asks the price. But girls aren't even allowed to ride bikes! Nonetheless she prevails on him to save it for her.
It becomes Wadjda's project to raise those 800 riyals (about $220) by any means necessary. These include begging money from her mom (gorgeous TV star Reem Abdullah, the most famous actress in Saudi Arabia); selling bracelets she makes; demanding riyals for every favor she does for anyone; and finally, in a desperate yet promising ploy, entering a Qur'anic recitation class at school that can qualify her for a contest whose prize is 1000 riyals. Wadjda is always in trouble with Ms. Houssa, the school director (dourr-faced but subtle actor-director Ahd, who isn't a simple baddie; there are none here). While the Qur'anic teacher accepts Wadjda's unlikely gesture of joining the class, her path to success in recitation is bumpy. Reading correctly and using the appropriate singing intonation don't come at all easily to her. But according to Islamic precepts that makes her persistence all the more to her credit.
Al-Mansour maintains her light touch in the casual way she interweaves scenes of Wadjda's family life with those of her experiences out in the world, with her playmate Abdullah, with shopkeepers, and at school. Moments between Wadjda and her mom are particularly rich and suggestive. Her father (Sultan Al Assaf) appears both glamorous and affectionate, but a bit remote. He is more of a visitor. He lives primarily nearby with his parents, only sleeping over now and then. These parents will want a male heir, and since Wajda's mother can't have another child, she fears her husband, her one and only love and a man both cocky and insecure, will give into parental pressure and take another wife.
Wadjda's mom works at a hospital but must go to one a long ride away, to what she calls أخر الدنيا "akhar ad-dunya," "the end of the world" rather than a nearby hospital where a friend works, because her husband won't let her work in the presence of men. And women can't drive, so she must hire an Indian driver, Iqbal, an ill-mannered guest worker, thus making the long trip even worse.
No women or girls can let themselves be seen by male strangers, even construction workers off in the distance: to do so is deemed brazen behavior. There are strange restrictions. Girls who are menstruating are not allowed to touch the Qur'an with their bare hands. When they leave the classroom they must be careful to shut the Holy Book, so no devil can spit into its pages. The girls aren't allowed to bring any pictures to school. Yet somehow in this environment Wadjda gets away with running around with her headscarf off and her clunky sneakers and listening to mix-tapes she makes of loud pop music, but Ms. Houssa keeps warning her she's out of line
Wadjda is sun-drenched and bright. Sometimes drab, sometimes beautiful, it has all the freshness of a a world we have never seen. This isn't only the first feature from the Kingdom made by a woman, but the first feature entirely shot in Saudi Arabia, period. Bear in mind also that there are no public cinemas permitted in the country. This doesn't, of course, mean nobody sees movies there. Al-Mansour herself reports growing up with a liberal father who staged "family" film-watches and allowed her to have that pretty green bike.
Wadjda can't entirely win in this society where women are so tightly restricted, but with her spirit and innate capacity, she seems destined to do something extraordinary, as has writer-director Haifaa Al-Mansour herself. This movie may seem simple, and it does focus on basics, as any first treatment of a world not previously accorded a voice -- or even glimpsed by us -- must be, but it is so heavy with offhand detail, its screenplay so finely crafted, that it seems destined to be studied and debated for years to come. Tech credits are of high quality, with support of a mostly German team. Sponsorship and backing also came from Prince Al-Waleed Bin Tal, Jordan’s Royal Film Commission, the Abu Dhabi Film Commission, Sundance Institute and the Hubert Bals Fund. This historical effort was also Haaifaa Mansour's first feature.
Wadjda debuted at Venice 31 Aug. 2012, showing again at Telluride 15 Sept., and numerous other festivals in 2013, winning the Audience Best International Feature award at LA, and a raft of other festival awards. It was released in France 6 Feb, 2013 to raves (Allociné press rating: 4.1); in the UK 19 July 2013 (also raves); the US release date is 13 Sept.
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