Comwayon
A Disappointing Continuation
Bergorks
If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.
Brenda
The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one
redx1708
Hmmmm, a Golden Globe nomination for best foreign movie ?? Can't have been a good year for foreign movies. We have this girl living in a Roma camp in some Paris suburb, so we know this is a social drama. They add some social stereotypes around her, a slutty mother, a friend with very religious Muslim parents, a local gangster/drug dealer, (well, you get the drift i'm sure), all people with no real prospect of a future. On top of that we get a high-strung dramatic musical score that sets in occasionally to remind us that this is serious stuff, oh and a kind of romance between the girl and a dancer that doesn't really add to the plot, but merely serves as an excuse for some fancy camera footage of dancers, so we can cut back and forth between violent scenes and scenes with dancers in motion. Does that make it art ? Well it seems the Globe jury bought the premise, but in my opinion this movie is 90 % window dressing to cover the fact that it's not much of a story. The girl is obsessed with making a lot of money, but she's also completely clueless and goes from one stupid plan to another, without realizing that there might be consequences for her actions. And that's pretty much it. To me it seems like some new director straight out of film school, and determined to make an impression just piled a lot of clichés on top of each other and forgot that really great movies are driven by good stories.
Ersbel Oraph
The director, like the main character, wants success. And she did it. Only by opening the door out not the door in. She got the big prize. And that is about it. The bureaucratic machine has eaten her whole. Don't get me wrong. I hope I am wrong.I have seen comments about the rush ending. The ending is not rushed. It is a natural consequence. And the whole script is made following a opera or simple drama. Only both classical drama and the opera are the ways white Europeans see as the highest refinement in entertainment. The film was made to please the eyes and the minds of old f*rts that fill the juries and the commissions that are specialized in turning the taxpayer money into alms for those who know how to please.There are social statements, but they are void and not offensive, like the small exercise in accountancy at the beginning: "how much you make? 1000€? The rent is 800. Pay the food and at the end of the month you have nothing." It is true. It is said. Yet it says nothing about the system. Police brutality is never touched. And the final confrontation with the cops is a ballet rehearsal.I have loved how expressive and full of life Oulaya Amamra can be. But her character has a split personality. In a country where when you can boil an egg on the asphalt the women still wear a bra and two tank tops, she can go to a club with no bra and a generous cleavage. She can in one scene have a hard time coping with the promiscuity of her mother pointing out her decision to fight that, and in another scene go lure a violent man with sex.In the end there is no story. What does the character want? That's easy. Money. But money to do what? And here is where the director-writer fails. All these are stock characters from television. The youngster with no future. The girls who sell a vagina hoping for the better. The opportunist drug peddler. The unfit mother who god forbid has sex with more than her lawfully given husband and does not read books on parenting. All these are silhouettes on TV. And the story is not on screen but in the white old man's mind, the one who handles the taxpayer money. Sure, there are drugs in the movie. But these are only a device. The stereotype of the easy money. The drugs are not escapism from the ugly world outside, as there is no ugly world outside. The high rise building is only the backdrop to remind the viewer of the 5 o'clock news.It could have been a 100 minutes story on a budget with only Oulaya Amamra, Déborah Lukumuena and Jisca Kalvanda. Without state money it could have been done precisely a decade ago when the director's association was made. But that association is another way to make a living dancing with the state and tearing the stories apart while moving from place to place to please white old men in power. Of course Cannes wouldn't have looked at such films. But who knows? In that dreamt reality 2016 would have been the production year of a third or even a fourth feature movie on a budget.Yamina Benguigui has started much better. Stronger films, more accessible stories. And today she is yet another bureaucrat managing other people's money. She has more than one boss and she has to please to receive the money she hands down. Her last work was for TV and that was 7 years ago. And she is not the only one eaten by the machine.A sad broken story made into a ladder.Contact me with Questions, Comments or Suggestions ryitfork @ bitmail.ch
cinephiley
I go to the cinema to laugh, cry, hate, feel. This what "Divines" provided me. Actresses can be describe with only one word: Amazing. I didn't expect anything special seeing this movie and what a slap in the face. A wonderful pleasure, the kind of cinema I haven't seen for a decade. I felt so many emotions. I was among the character and not on a sit. Divines is magic and Divines was the movie that deserved an Oscar for 2017. A must see, you won't regret it. This movie is all about friendship and has nothing to do with Paris' Suburb. The suburb is only a decor. A detail. All actresses and actors did an amazing job.£ Thank you Houda, the film maker for making us such a beautiful movie.
jean-philippe monteiro
This is a welcome sight. This is not an easy one. Scene after scene, the characters, the settings, the relationship, each and every element comes in your face with incredible strength; from classroom argument to daughter-mother interaction, nothing is easy and nothing doesn't hurt. And for all that, the movie still manages to be fun, to make you laugh (albeit often at someone's painful expenses). Praise must of course go towards the main character, surprisingly multifaceted, rich and intense in about any moment of the film. She will draw you into her hopes, values and experience, her very own; morals, logic, conventions be damned! The talent from the young cinematographer at work here is to project all this with that incredible force; you will be happy when the characters are, you will cry when they do. And you will hope with them of a better tomorrow, however twisted. The synopsis here doesn't do justice to the scenario, this is much more about survival, and progress, only with the meagre supply of solutions and resources available to the heroes where they where born, in the limited scope of perspectives such life can offer them. They will not accept their fate, they will fight it, and we will be entranced by them.
