The Toronto International Film Festival, long considered the unofficial start of the annual film awards season, contains plenty of high profile Oscar bait films with star-studded casts but it’s also a great place to catch hidden gems that arrive with much less fanfare. Many interesting little films from countries that don’t normally get much publicity can be found for those willing to invest their time to look and Bastardo is a great example of that. Bastardo, a Tunisian film by director Nejib Belkadhi, is perhaps a slightly familiar story, but it comes packaged in a very unfamiliar setting with a refreshingly different cast of eclectic characters.
Bastardo is the story of Mohsen, a down on his luck underdog who lives in a district in the rural area of Tunisia that time and the 21st century has clearly forgotten. Apparently the police and law has no sway in this district and everything is in the control of a local thug named Larnouba, or to be more specific, in the control of Khadhra, his domineering and physically imposing mother who possesses a booming voice that would put most men to shame (her role is actually played by a male actor). The film takes its time introducing all the characters and their various relationships with each other as we get thrown headfirst into this bizarre and unconventional world but everything soon becomes crystal clear.
A simple story about three childhood friends who all stray away from each other as they grow older lies at the centre of this film. Larnouba (a name that basically translates to rabbit) is a stuttering obese man who was groomed from childhood by his abusive and domineering mother to take the place of his father as district boss and he struggles with his own meek nature to fit that role. Bent Essengra, afflicted by a fantastical malady, is an outcast who still cares deeply for both Mohsen and Larnouba in her own way but has no love in her life of her own. Abandoned as a baby and discovered in a rubbish bin, Mohsen is taken into the care of a lonely man and put under the protection of Larnouba’s father, the neighborhood boss at the time. We find Mohsen as a grown man unable to escape the stigma of such an unseemly background. As we are introduced to this character and his world, he is given very little respect and because he lacks a last name, he is simply called “Bastardo”. When Mohsen loses his job after becoming implicated in a robbery perpetrated by Morjana, a woman at his work whom he clearly has had a long and unhealthy fixation about, a chain of events that will forever alter his life gets set into motion.
Morjana herself is a completely unattainable illusory spectre and we never get a glimpse of the actual woman as we only ever see her through Mohsen’s point of view. We catch a silhouette here, a blur there, or touched up and photo-shopped billboard posters of her every now and then but she always appears beyond his reach. The character herself is unimportant, but what she represents in this story and what she represents to Mohsen is pivotal to this film. While he starts off as a naturally sympathetic figure, his decisions and choices lead him astray in every way possible. Mohsen is discontented with his lot in life and wants to escape his meagre surroundings, wants to escape his background, and more significantly and devastatingly, he desires with a great passion to escape himself. He spurns the love of those around him and seeks that which he cannot have. He desires power; he desires a chance to fulfill something he feels is lacking inside of him. He desires to be the type of person that someone like Morjana would want to be with and the pursuit of that dark and consuming impulse comes at a very high cost.
The universe of the film contains a number of unbelievable elements but this isn’t meant to be a realistic world. The ideas and themes it discusses are quite real though. The movie, at its core, is a commentary on the powerful and potentially negative effects of capitalism and progress on society and the way those effects can pervade and corrupt everything, making people desperate and greedy for things they don’t really need. Mohsen and the entire district eventually fall victim to this overreaching lifestyle and it’s interesting to see the influence that things we take for granted have in this world. We witness how our own violent and antagonistic tendencies tend to parallel behavior found amongst other animals throughout the film, and a number of observations about the ugly side of human nature are made throughout as well. Ultimately, the film attempts to question what is truly important and what truly makes us happy and while there isn’t much optimism or redemption to be found in Bastardo’s world, it still remains a gripping and entertaining tale that deserves an audience to appreciate it.
Trailer:
Movie info:
Runtime: 106 minutes
Rating: 14A
Language: Arabic
Cast: Moneem Chouayat, Lobna Noomene, Chedley Arfaoui, Lassaad Ben Abdallah
Director: Nejib Belkadhi
Screenplay: Nejib Belkadhi
Cinematography: Gergely Poharnok
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