The Mother of All Lies review – pursuing the truth of Morocco’s brutal dictatorship years

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Asmae El Moudir employs a delicate mix of handmade replicas and oral testimony to brilliantly evoke personal and collective trauma Between those who refuse to remember and those who struggle to forget, a tumultuous clash of minds occupies the centre of Asmae El Moudir’s inventive documentary, a prize-winner at last year’s Cannes film festival. Through a constellation of clay figurines and dollhouse-style miniature sets, most of which were constructed by El Moudir’s father, the director recreates her oppressive childhood in the Sebata district of Casablanca. Under the watchful eyes of her domineering grandmother Zahra, all personal photos are banished from the house, save for a picture of King Hassan II. The delicate mix of handmade replicas and oral testimony brilliantly evokes the personal and collective trauma that stem from Morocco’s “Years of Lead” – a period of state brutality under Hassan II’s dictatorial rule. Lingering on the nimble fingers of El Moudir’s father as he puts t
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Last Summer review – Catherine Breillat’s all too safe version of a dangerous romance

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Breillat’s remake of Queen of Hearts rather pointlessly draws the sting from a mother’s affair with her teenage stepson

Catherine Breillat has made a hot – or rather tepid – mess of this remake of the very recent Danish erotic thriller Queen of Hearts, and it’s not immediately clear why exactly she felt she needed to direct her own moderate version. The changes amount to smudging the original’s icy Scandi sheen, decreasing its erotic excitement, making the performances more laboured and thus leaving the story’s essential preposterousness dangerously exposed.

The first film, from writer-director May el-Toukhy, featured Trine Dyrholm as an elegant career lawyer specialising in representing rape victims who has a passionate affair with her teen stepson; that is, her husband’s moody son by his first marriage. Now the action is transplanted from chilly Denmark to sunny, summery France and Léa Drucker plays legal high-flyer Anne, married to wealthy but dull businessman Pierre (Olivier Rabourdin), with two adorable adopted twin girls. She has a sister, Mina (Clotilde Courau), who lives locally, has a less glamorous and successful life and is affectionately yet shrewdly unimpressed by Anne’s pretensions.

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