Snow White

Nico (Julie Fournier) is a spoiled-but-troubled brat, and Swiss indie musician Paco (Carlos Leal) is her one chance to escape the world of wealthy weasels she has grown up in. Now this girl, why haven't I seen her before? Why isn't she on the covers of magazines? Maybe she is, but only in Switzerland? Either way, Julie Fournier is the most beautiful young actress I have seen in a long time, and, believe me, check out rising female stars is pretty much all I do. A good-looking girl makes for a good-looking movie: swimsuits, parties, dancing, all with a somewhat 1980s feel, down to the visual gadgetry: split screen, patchwork interlace, spaghetti preparation time-lapsed into a three-second sequence. The same goes for subject matter. It's all there, the coke and the rap and the booze and the pain. What you see is what you get, and it's watchable enough as it is, although there is probably a more substantial movie here, struggling to get out. Go see it if you liked "Tempo" (1996/II). Typical line: "I'm too cranked up on coke to get laid. Let's smoke some pot first."

Snow White, which just came out in Locarno, where I had the chance to see it, of course refers to the world famous fairy tale. And it also refers to coke. In the end, real snow of the Swiss Alps plays its part as well.

Thus all three aspects of the title are addressed in this film. There is a lot of dope on scene, and there is also a pale, dark haired girl - with a prince who has to go through all kind of trouble to come to her rescue.

But: It's not a fairy tale. It's supposed to be a realistic drama located in Zurich, Switzerland (according to the Tagline).

Technically the movie is close to perfect. Unfortunately a weak plot, foreseeable dialogs, a mostly unreal scenery and the mixed acting don't add up to create authenticity. Thus as a spectator I remained untouched.

And then there were the clichés, which drove me crazy one by one: Snow White is a rich and spoiled upper class daughter - of course her parents are divorced and she never got enough love from them, because they were so busy all the time. Her best girlfriend, on the other hand, has loving and caring parents. They (a steelworker and a housewife) live in a tiny flat, poor and happy - and ignorant of the desperate situation their daughter is in. The good guy (= prince) is a musician (!) from the French speaking part of Switzerland (which is considered to be the economically less successful but emotionally fitter fraction of the country). He has problems with his parents. They are migrants from Spain, who don't seem to accept his wild way of living - until the father becomes seriously ill and confesses his great admiration for his son from a hospital bed.

And so it goes on: Naturally, the drug dealer is brutal, the bankers are heartless, the club owner is a playboy and the photographer, although a woman (!), has only her career in mind when she exposes Snow White in artsy pornographic pictures at a show.

This review doesn't need a spoiler in order to let you add these pieces to an obvious plot. As I like other films by Samir, e.g. "Forget Baghdad", I was quite disappointed. Let's hope for the next one.

Snow White, in the first line, is a love story: Paco, the lead singer of a rap group from the french part of Switzerland, son of Spanish emigrants, occasionally falls in love to Nico, spoiled daughter of a swiss banker. But lots of things stand in between this predestined couple... of course the story plot line refers to the famous fairy tale "Snow White".

But the movie is far away from being just a simple fairy tale: The question the author emerges with his film is: What do you do when you finish school if you got all the possibilities in the world?! the answer is frightening: Nico does not know what to do with her life and gets more and more in the swamp of endless partys, drugs and prostitution.

What makes the movie interesting is, that it deals with different important aspects of contemporary swiss society like self-identity problems of young people (switzerland has one of the highest suicide rates), drug problems, the exchange between french and German speaking part, the immigrants etc. without rising the moral forefinger and combined with a entertaining and touching love story...

Formally interesting about the film is its technique of editing. Samir uses - as in the preceding movies - different methods of montage, especially very carefully composed sequences with split screens...

The reception of the movie in Switzerland has overall been very positive. Some bad reactions had to with the expectations: Samirs most known films have been highly intellectual documentary films about swiss and Iraqi society and culture. So for a part of "his audience" it was difficult to accept that he made an entertaining fiction film for a bigger audience... My main critique about this overall great movie is about the (too simply drawn) profile of some of the minor important characters like the parents of Nico.

Last thing to mention is the great soundtrack including severals songs composed by the brilliant main actor Carlos Leal and interpreted by him and some of the members of his former music group "Sens Unik".