After so many TV reports about youth radicalisation in European countries I thought I could figure out the whole narrative of "Layla M": a rebellious teenager of North-African background wearing the black veil as a marker of reset identity, marrying another extremist and exiling herself to Syria, like so many European "second-generations" her age in the early 2010s... among a few 'occidental' coverts spotting red bushy beards or azure eyes emerging from their chadors.
Having also watched documentaries on the daily life in Raqqa, I felt it a Karma retribution to those who put themselves in the lion's mouth, in a lifestyle they didn't expect. Some tried to come back, pleading redemption and brandishing their citizenship but wasn't the exile a renouncement to it in the first place? As imperfect as they were, the countries or values they rejected provided them education, welfare and to some degrees the very right to speak their identity.
Being of a similar background myself, I can relate to these existential questionings, I had no hesitation changing my first name once I got my citizenship, feeling that an ethnic name would be too much a burden. It was just as if I had that 'stranger complex' myself. While I am not a religious person, I had my 'religious periods' never too extreme but sometimes, a stranger find comfort to their individual frustration in a collective sameness.
Still, why did I finally watch "Layla M"? After binging the series "Kalifat', I was wondering whether the film would provide other insights. Well, it did. It couldn't avoid the aforementioned plot points but I just loved the character's arc of Layla. If anything, Mijke de Jong's film is a character study and a damn good one, starting with predictable elements to better subvert them at the end, revealing that the human factor is decisive in the religious choices but also works like a double-edged sword... remember that Oscar Wilde's quote about the two tragedies in one's life?
Layla, magnificently played by Dutch actress Nora Koussour was a very interesting character indeed, one that makes such an effort to be disagreeable (with her friends, her family, any 'white person'...) that it's remotely impossible to like her. Then slowly we start to understand her without sympathizing, not because we change our perspective, but because she changes hers. This is the tale of a woman who lived her religious, dream to the fullest, playing the virtue- signaling outcast, the dissident voice whenever she could, parroting the Texts in form of sly retorts... only she forgot an important verse: "perhaps you hate a thing that is good for you; or you love a thing that is bad for you."
Speaking of hate, It's fair to call her hateful at first, interpreting everything as racism or i slamophobia and the most mundane events reinforce her conviction that muslims are natural outcasts in Western countries. She wears the veil at school, defies her own parents who are not religious and even tries to brainwash her younger brother. More seriously, she belongs to a local pro-Palestin activist organization and volunteer for anti-niqab pictures. Layla incarnates a lost generation, rebels with a dangerous cause, spoon-fed by extremist websites and social networks, fantasizing on a new life painted in holy colors.
She ultimately crosses the line when she exits the graduation exam room and tells a friend that she'll go to hell because she doesn't obey God by following his guideline . After one football game interrupted by an anti-terrorist brigade, Bilal gets arrested and at his return, seems to have been cured all right. At the police station, Layla is advised by a female officer to never come back, Layla asks her if she's muslim, the woman nods, Layla scoffs at her. There's something so pathetic in Layla's own stubbornness that our sympathy comes to an end, and had she kept with the same attitude, I might have disliked the film.
Then something interesting happens, determined to leave the family, she marries one of the boys from the organization, Abdel (Illias Addab) and after that, finally relieved of the burden to live among 'kufar', she finally smiles and her soul blossoms. There's a magical scene, when they're together in a hotel for their honeymoon, she plays a romantic hit song (music is supposed to be prohibited) and engages in a sensual belly dance, luring him into making love. And we can finally see her without her veil, erotic, sensual, feminine, in fact, finally acting as normally as any woman with the man she loves. After that, it's another "Layla M" illuminating the screen.
It seems that religion was just a veil she could hide her rebellious ego into and live on her own terms. However, when they go to Syria and she finds herself in a little place where men are told to dominate their women, she discovers that she's too 'occidental' for that, even more than her neighbor (a European woman) and she just can't stand the old fashioned way, like Bergman in "Stromboli" or Sally Field in "Not Without My Daughter". She's a fish out of the water even more since she discovered the delights of life. Tactfully, Abbad doesn't portray Abdel as an abusive husband, he's obviously caught in a vice between his 'job' and his defying wife, both conflicting with his rather pacifist nature.
The film is well shot, documentary style, the 'Syrian' background doesn't fool someone who grew up in Morocco but the character study is on-point: Layla was simply a brat rebelling through an archaic revision of religion until it becomes the norm, then she makes a 180 turn to find herself facing personal contradictions and deeper existential questionings. The tragic strength of ISIS is to spot young troubled minds at the pinacle of their existential crisis like symbolic clay pigeons.
Layla ultimately fell on the ground of reality but the final shot asks that haunting question: is she broken yet?
