User Reviews

When I picked up this move by Mehdi Ben Attia, I middle eastern origin name, stereotypingly I infer that it could be about a young future promising boy. Bingo. I am not surprised.

I guess this movie want to tell something about the love, foreigners, integration etc.

The movie will magnify some aspect to show the contrast. So every middle eastern who broke the car and took the keys and open the door is not indeed a bad guy, he can turn to be a good man. Secondly an middle eastern can even study well the political sciences, enjoy theater, even reincarnate into a 100% french man. Coming to the acting, light, the music in the movie everything is in the order and good shape.

Ambitious ,including some disturbing sequences (in the second third) ,but with a truly disappointing ending which boils down a strange screenplay à la Polanski to a mundane love story .

The director wanted to link two worlds,two ways of life and two cultures .Yacine is a brilliant student ,but his family does not seem to be aware of it:he is at odds with his father and the rest of his family ,with the exception of his kid brother with whom he shares a seedy apartment;his girlfriend does not play a prominent part,being mostly decorative (she is not a Muslim).In direct contrast with this,we meet Richard :a professor ,who takes much interest in the Young student's walk of life ;apparently,he has all that he could wish for: every one of his books was a success,and his career at the university is buoyant;nevertheless he knows he's getting old and that life has lost its mystery:a father who's a pain in the neck ,a brother ,and a pretty (but a bit listless) wife .

In its second part,the movie turns Highsmith's "the talented Mr Ripley" into a fantasy story;Richard dies and Yacin tells the professor's baffled family that he's "not dead" but that he lives in another body.Split personality? Desire to be part of the elite ?to escape from a family he is ashamed of?Desire for the widow? After several intriguing scenes (the ceremony Yacine is not allowed to attend ,the nightmare,the cemetery) ,all peters out in the last part :the last picture evades these questions.

A good potential ,but a very average treatment.