A buttoned-up young woman in 2011 Damascus is lured by the possibility of personal liberation when a brothel opens upstairs in debuting director Gaya Jiji’s fuzzily reasoned “My Favorite Fabric.” Inspired by “Belle du Jour,” though with little of that classic’s trenchant subversiveness, this thematically ambitious femme-centric drama aims to weave together the repressiveness of Syria’s regime with the limited possibilities for female self-expression within that society. The results are uncertain and artificial, full of missed chances that bode ill for a screen life outside a French release and a few festivals.
Life in Syria is becoming increasingly difficult, so for a middle-class family like that of Salwa (Souraya Baghdadi), a woman alone with three daughters, the best way of leaving behind the bombings is to find husbands for her offspring. Nahla (Manal Issa) is the oldest: Flinty and petulant, she clothes herself in dowdy garments that aim to hide an overripe sensuality.
Life in Syria is becoming increasingly difficult, so for a middle-class family like that of Salwa (Souraya Baghdadi), a woman alone with three daughters, the best way of leaving behind the bombings is to find husbands for her offspring. Nahla (Manal Issa) is the oldest: Flinty and petulant, she clothes herself in dowdy garments that aim to hide an overripe sensuality.
- 5/18/2018
- by Jay Weissberg
- Variety Film + TV
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