The hum in the theatre at the imposing Palais de Congress, the main venue of the 19th edition of the Marrakech Film Festival, is electric. ‘Queens’, the debut feature of Yasmine Benkiran, is a homegrown film, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival in September. Every seat is taken, the audience is fully primed for this Moroccan-themed ‘Thelma & Louise’, and the roars when the cast and crew show up to introduce the film are deafening.
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Turns out, for once, the advance buzz was right. ‘Queens’ is a complete cracker, channelling a great feminist spirit in its familiar theme of women-on-the-run, making-a-dash-for-freedom, looping in genre elements from road-heist-cops-and-convicts adventures. But ‘Queens’ is also very much its own movie, powered by solid performances from its inspired cast.
Zineb (Nisrin Erradi), convicted for drug dealing and theft, is nearing the end of her prison term. But when her 11 year old daughter Ines (Rayhan Guaran) is hauled off to a state home for a minor misdemeanor, she breaks out, grabs the girl and hits the road. The escape vehicle, an exhaust-spewing delivery truck carrying satellite dishes, is driven by Asma (Nisrine Benchara), who has been struggling in an oppressive marriage. And, of course, the trio forges an unlikely partnership in its journey from Casablanca to the Atlantic coast via the scenic desert route through the Atlas mountains, covering 800 kms in four days, meeting strange-and-interesting people on the way. That last bit is also part of the road-movie genre: how else would a film like this broaden its base to include other characters? An unlikely pair of partners, an old cop nearing retirement and a young woman whose first major assignment this is, are hot on the heels of the fugitives, along with Asma’s husband, and a posse of policemen.
The thing with films fronted by women who break the rules set by men, and especially if those women are on the run, automatically takes you to the territory claimed by the very American Thelma and Louise racing across the continent in their long, tail-finned Thunderbird. But ‘Queens’ refuses to name itself after its protagonists, which is a good thing. Zineb, full-bosomed and blowsy, and Asma, closed-in and seemingly meek, are Moroccan, but they could be women from anywhere, in their attempt to smash the patriarchy. And the little girl is given a very specific outline: steeped in local fables, she wants to examine peoples’ feet, because who knows they could djinns? It also gives ‘Queens’, with their very real queens, despite their dramatic break-out dash across the country, a lovely magical realist feeling.
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And like all good front-facing heroines, Zineb, who believes ‘everything will be all right’, is given the best lines in the movie. ‘Alcohol and nicotine open and close arteries, so do them on the same day, and you will be all right’. Or words to that effect. Now that’s what Bollywood would call a ‘seetimaar’ dialogue, and sure enough, the theatre erupts, and it takes a long time for the applause to die down.
