Spotlight

Spotlight Date: 29-January-12
Spoiler Rating: Medium

Hideous Kinky (1998)

By location alone Hideous Kinky does not fit this month's "Desert Dreams" Spotlight series* since it takes place on the edge of the Sahara rather than within it. Yet the story feels thematically appropriate. The allure of the desert involves the culture that sprouted from the sand as much as the sand itself, a culture which looks ancient and complex to the Western mind. Hideous Kinky is about someone who immerses herself in this culture in a deliberate attempt to disengage from her past and discover new ways of life.

The movie is based on the autobiographic novel of Esther Freud, a descendant of Sigmund Freud who spent part of her childhood in Morocco with her sister and mother. (The title comes from a word game the sisters played.) Kate Winslet plays the mother, Julia, a former Londoner who has moved to Marrakech to live a hippie fantasy of exploration and enlightenment. (The year is 1972.) The inherent risks of her nonconformity emerge in the very first scene. Julia has nightmares about losing her younger girl (Carrie Mullan) in the labyrinthine byways of the city, while the older girl (Bella Riza) openly laments not being normal. All three suffer from poverty, relying on the sale of rag dolls which Julia makes and nobody wants, and on sporadic checks from the girls' father, a famous artist with an inability to follow through on commitments. Julia's mind has not opened so far that she doesn't regard it as a man's place to provide. When she takes a lover (Saïd Taghmaoui) who becomes the new man of the family, he lets her down by being just as ungrounded as she is.

The contrasts of Julia's bohemian life seem both troubling and authentic. At 25 she is still at an age of self-discovery, and she was obviously very young when she became a mother, so you can't fault her for wanting to roam; yet her pursuits appear selfish when set against her daughters' needs. This tension builds when she meets other Europeans who question her choices and aggravate the older girl's unhappiness. After meeting with a Sufi holy man and undergoing a couple of actual nightmares, Julia is forced to take a hard look at herself. She doesn't form any black-and-white decisions or become an entirely new person. As befits a biographical tale and the call of its setting, Hideous Kinky is more about searching than finding.

*See the Index by date for a list of other films in this month's series.

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