La sposa siriana

A wedding in the family, usually a happy event for everyone involved, turns out to be a sad affair. This particular one will mark the destiny of Mona, a young Druze woman living in the Golan Heights, now under Israeli rule. Like her parents, Mona considers herself Syrian. She stands to lose the privilege of ever going back, even for a visit, when she crosses the border where her future husband, a Syrian actor, awaits for her with his own entourage.

"The Syrian Bride" was a surprise. Directed with honesty by Eran Riklis, who also co-wrote the screen play with Suha Arraf, the film takes no sides between one faction, or another. In many ways, the movie seems to be sympathetic toward the Druze family, but in no way it felt preachy, or frankness in its presentation of what goes on in that troubled part of the world.

The family at the center of the story is not a happy one. The father, Hammed, has been in prison for his pro-Syrian views. He has also estranged himself from his two sons, Hattem, who has married a Russian doctor and now lives abroad and Marwan, a businessman of sorts, based in Italy. The oldest daughter, Amal, a sensitive woman, has a troubled marriage herself to a man who can't understand her need to assert herself and go to college. It is a male dominated society where women don't seem to have much to contribute except have children and be housewives.

Most impressive in the film is Hiam Abbass, an actress we have admired from her previous work, notably, "Satin Rouge" and "Paradise Now". She has a quiet way of getting under the skin of the role she is playing; this woman shows such dignity in her work that it's hard to take ones eyes from her once she is on the screen. Makram Khoury is seen as the patriarch, Hammed. Clare Khoury is also effective as the bride who must leave family and friends to go to another world. Eyad Sheety and Ashraf Barhom play the two brothers.

"The Syrian Bride" is a satisfying film by Eran Riklis, a talented director who shows great sensibility toward the material.

This deceptively modest 2004 film lingers in the memory because of the bigger sociopolitical context that Israeli director Eran Riklis provides in setting his story in the Golan Heights, an area occupied by Israel since the Six-Day War in 1967. Over the course of one day, the story revolves around an extended Druze family in the northern village of Majdal Shams where they are preparing for the wedding of youngest daughter Mona. The catch is that she has never met the groom, a distant relative who happens to be a big Syrian TV personality in Damascus. It sounds like the source of comedy hijinks, but there is a sad undertone because once married, Mona officially becomes Syrian and cannot return home to her family.

The intended couple, however, is not the focus as much as the family dynamics that become ignited by the wedding. The patriarch is Hammed, a political activist on probation, and he has two sons - Hattem, who has been cast out by the conservative religious cabal for leaving the country and marrying a Russian woman, and Marwan, who provides the comedy relief as a womanizing salesman. The glue of the family, however, is provided by eldest sister Amal, who defiantly stands up to the men in her family and wants to get her bachelor's degree in Haifa. The first hour deals mainly with the standard pre-wedding confusion, though it happens to take place on the same day that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad succeeded his father, but the last half-hour takes place entirely at the Israel-Syria border crossing where the officials from both countries refuse to cooperate with a negotiating Red Cross worker in allowing Mona to enter Syria.

With its primarily somber tone, this is no Middle Eastern derivative of "My Big, Fat Greek Wedding", but Riklis and co-screenwriter Suha Arraf supply genuine warmth toward the characters and bring immediacy and credibility to the personal situation at hand. The acting is solid with Hiam Abbass the standout as Amal. There are nice turns by Makram Khoury as Hammed, his real-life daughter Clara as Mona, Eyad Sheety as Hattem and Ashraf Barhom who steals scenes as the gap-toothed Marwan. Special mention should be made for Michael Wiesweg's expert cinematography which perfectly captures the mostly sun-baked terrain. This is a case where the 2006 DVD package from Koch Lorber is invaluable for the context it provides to the movie's story. The making-of featurette, an extensive interview with Riklis and his accompanying commentary all help considerably in understanding the political situation that both drives and reflects the wedding preparation complications. Also included is the original trailer as well as the U.S. version.

"The Syrian Bride" uses the familiar comic genre of the colliding tensions in an extended family wedding to humanistically illuminate Middle East political, gender, generational, religious, modernization and economic tensions coming down to human relationships vs. bureaucracies.

Co-writers Suha Arraf (a Palestinian journalist) and Israeli director Eran Riklis pile almost too much on to this one Druze (Israeli Arab) family living in the occupied Golan Heights in order to make the personal political. The tensions, poignancy and symbolism of a wedding are heightened because when this bride leaves her home for her arranged marriage with a Syrian celebrity, she will not be able to return home.

Every complicated character has a complicated background, whether theirs or their parents' politics or their religiosity or their dress or their educational or romantic aspirations-- and is in a complicated relation to every other character and the authorities.

In addition to the return of prodigal sons from overseas, the larger community intrudes on the intra-family tensions, from robed tribal elders and the police who each bring warnings of proper behavior to a comical videographer. My dependency on English subtitles lessened some of the impact of hearing characters switch from Arabic to Hebrew to French to Russian to English to communicate, as part of the interactions are based on who can understand different languages and who can't. This complex in-gathering all symbolically happens the same day as a demonstration in support of the change over of power in Syria from the father the dictator to the son, while a flat tire leads to a crucial delay. The ubiquitous television, and government attention, however, is focused on the West Bank, making this border a forgotten zone as well as a no (wo)man's land.

What makes it all hang together amidst this human comedy is the central focus from the start to the finish on the almost silent bride, dressed in Western white, and her more verbal older sister, rebelliously in slacks, and both played by powerful actresses. Each has made choices in the past they regret and each chooses their future now, despite the efforts of all their male relatives, let alone global politics, to thwart them and make them helpless.

Even with the heavy-handed baggage of all the "Crash"-like coincidences, the film beautifully makes the point that politics isn't just ideology but affects how people get on with the basics of their lives.

After Israel took the Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 war, 17,000 ethnic Druze, whose people had been living in the area for centuries, suddenly found their lives fractured and their families divided by an impassable border. In spite of substantial economic and educational gains made under Israeli rule, the Druze of the Golan still consider themselves to be Syrians living under Israeli occupation. They do not intermingle with Israelis, refuse to hold Israeli passports, and live in their own villages. A French/German/Israeli co-production, The Syrian Bride tells the story of one such family as they prepare to attend their daughter's wedding on the Syrian border. It is primarily a comedy yet it is also a poignant drama that takes no sides but attempts to put the political turmoil in the region into a humanistic context.

Mona (Clara Khoury), a young Druze bride is to be wed to Syrian TV-star Tallel (Derar Sliman) from Damascus, a man she has never met. Since neither country recognizes the other diplomatically, once the bride crosses the border to Syria, she will never be allowed to return to Israel and her wedding day, usually a day of great joy, may be one of her saddest. While the film tells us much about the sad realities of the political fragmentation in the Middle East, it is also a story with social and cultural ramifications. Mona's sister Amal (Hiyam Abbas), whose expressive face frames the film's beginning and end, is stuck in an unhappy marriage. She wants to attend Haifa University but is thwarted by her husband Amin (Adnan Trabshi) who is afraid of losing face in the village and of relinquishing "control".

Mona's father Hammed (Makram Khoury), a pro-Syrian agitator known to Israeli police, is forbidden to travel to the Syrian border to say goodbye to his daughter. He harbors resentment and refuses to welcome his son Hattem (Eyad Sheety) and his Russian wife home from Moscow because he broke family tradition and moved away eight years ago. Another son, Marwan (Ashraf Barhom), a businessman, is welcomed by the family but is rejected by an angry former girlfriend, a French Red Cross worker (Julie-Anne Roth), who works in the village. Mona's character is mostly symbolic and she has little to say, yet the story of the film is written on her face and her lack of dimensionality is more than compensated for by the depth of the supporting characters, particularly Hattem and Amal.

As these conflicts bubble under the surface, the situation becomes increasingly absurd as the wedding is threatened by bureaucratic intransigence on the border checkpoints between Israel and Syria. Mona's passport has an Israeli stamp on it and, according to Syrian regulations, anyone carrying a passport with an Israeli stamp is denied entry to Syria. Neither Israeli nor Syrian customs officials seem to know what to do and the prospective bride and groom are stuck in a no-man's land, reduced to communicating via bullhorns pressed against locked gates. The Syrian Bride may sound like an exercise in absurdity bordering on farce, yet for the family who may never see their child again, it is a drama of high seriousness. Whether you consider The Syrian Bride to be an allegory, black comedy, family drama, or political statement, the image of a girl sitting alone in a white wedding dress stuck between impenetrable barriers is one that remains.

Of all the movies I ever saw, this one reminded me of the sixth sense.

In the sixth sense (which, let me state right now, has nothing to do with this film in any way, shape or form) one must ponder of serious holes in the plot. Holes that if considered, make the movie completely incoherent. I won't get into detail because I don't want to spoil the movie for the three remaining people who hadn't seen it yet.

The Syrian bride revolves around Amal, a Druze woman in Majd Alshams, a pro-Syrian village that is located in the Golan heights (I'll get into the pro-Syrian and pro-Israeli Druze villages later on). Amal is about to marry a local Syrian celebrity, whom she saw only in the soap-comedy he stars in. This wedding is more than just a plain wedding, it's the last time she will see her family because once she crosses the border and receives the Syrian citizenship, she will never see her family again (unless they meet on a neutral turf such as abroad- Hole No.1). It goes without saying that this fact makes the event a bittersweet one. To make matters worse, the family, already morose over parting with Amal for good (if you disregard the plot hole) has to deal with the feud between the father, a conservative man who brushed with the wrong side of the law (for ideological reasons I couldn't fathom) and his son who was banned by the village elderly for marrying a Russian foreigner.

The wedding brings together the family of the estranged son, his hot-shot, teeth-gapped (a crucial fact in the film) womanizing brother, Marwan and his sister, Mona (Klara khouri in a great performance) a strong willed woman that fights for her independence as well as the one of her teenage daughter. A fight amidst a conservative society that still attributes female independence with male incompetence.

The family's inner "demons" cease to be its major problem when upon escorting the bride to the border, the family faces the weenie Israeli bureaucrat and the ridiculously stubborn Syrian bureaucrat preventing the bride from crossing the border and uniting with her future husband.

The story is essentially a personal one when the political atmosphere plays as an intensifier. The Pro-Syrian Druze who are protesting against the Israeli occupation and for Bashar Elasad (who occupies Lebanon till today, Plot hole No. 2) are in a constant conflict between the country they feel they belong to and the country they currently reside in (as opposed to the Pro-Israeli Druze who serve in the Israeli army and show a remarkable awe-inspiring loyalty to Israel that I rarely witness).

Conflicted emotions, both political and personal, dictate the entire film and with a sometimes over simplified but altogether credible script and with a subtle direction that depicts very authentically (or at least seemingly authentic to the Jewish viewer such as yours truly), the movie creates the emotional effect that transcends the political agenda its based on.

As another reviewer pointed out, this film is the example of the drastic improvement that Israeli films went through the last couple of years when the personal movies became top priority and not the political ones. This movie is a completion of the process by combining the two ganres successfully (once you disregard the holes) to make a film that people can isolate themselves from its ideology and enjoy its overall undeniable,qualities which is, as you probably have guessed, what I did.

9 out of 10 in FilmOmeter.