rgsalinas Winner of the 2016 Audience Award for New Auteurs at AFI Fest, DIVINES is a feature film loaded with emotion that pivots from one side of the spectrum to the other. It is not a coming of age story but rather, a story about two girls that are best friends and the lead's, Dounia, conflict of her soul. Director Hounda delivers a touching piece of cinema that blurred my emotion of how I feel about the lead character played by Oulaya Amamra. The protagonist's circumstances and choices make for a masterful narrative story that ultimately leaves you feeling the characters emptiness and guilt.Dounia is an ambitious girl who lives in a gypsy camp in Paris with her mother, who is considered the camp slut. The fact that she is a bastard child, affects her temperament when she is amidst her peers. This is a burden that Dounia carries around with her that shapes her attitude and choices. The only person in her life that brings light and joy is her friend Maimouna. With ties to her Islamic faith, Maimouna is positioned to have better sense than Dounia. However, paired together their childlike wonder and fantasy of becoming rich is enough to lure them into participating in a world of licentious behavior.Hounda's directing, clever scene selection and storytelling through the lens, created the opportunity for me to participate in Dounia's and Maimouna childlike wonder. Throughout the film I am constantly changing my mind on how I feel about the two friends. Credit to Hounda use of cleaver devices in her narrative story telling in particular the cinematography. Accompanied by brilliant acting from Oulaya. Hounda sister in real life, Hounda visuals brought me in when the girls were fantasizing about driving a Ferrari. She successfully captured their childlike wonder that allowed me to imagine alongside the characters as if I was a child riding in the car with them. This creative storytelling provided me the opportunity to care for the girls despite their wicked and edacious actions.The pacing of the film is superb doubling down on Dounia's disturbed circumstances and poor decision making motivated by disease only money could cure. I often found my emotion being teeter- tottered. On one side, my inner child wants Dounia and Maimouna to succeed in obtaining the riches they desire, even through indecent means. On the other end of the spectrum, Hounda pulls me back to reality through the unfolding of each scene. The harsh reality of Dounia's choices surrounded by the reality of a young girl involved in street life and her motivation of easy virtue slowly pulled me back ultimately lead me to judge the character as immoral.In the end I was left feeling empathy for the characters. This narrative is a great example to me that fairy tales don't come true. The happy ending presented for Dounia was just that a fairy tale. Her choices fueled by her ambition for money lead her down all the wrong paths that striped her of her essence. The characters motivation provided her heart and soul with meaning but ended up being the very thing that left her heartless and empty in the end.

lion_month I watched "Divines" carefully. When you follow the story of the movie, a few questions are coming up and the most important one is What the movie was trying to say to audiences? Well, the movie is trying to point out that achieving money in any dirty deal cannot buy a good true friendship. That is what I speculated. Family and society have very important roles in educating children and forming their characters. We see Dounia who has different troubles in her life including her family. She dreams for having money to change her life and her mother's too. But the way she went through it was not right. By making wrong decisions, she lost her best friend. However, she did regular crime acts to favor herself. The movie has a few extra plots and scenes. Moreover, it doesn't show what happens after murdering the boss guy (I forgot his name) for stealing his money from his home.If the story could be going on, then Dounia had to be arrested by police. However, this could be shown in the movie instead of extra dancing scenes! In addition to the explanations stated above, the action of players was OK, specially Oulaya Amamra as Dounia. Sound, make up and music were fine. All in all, I was expecting a better movie. My big problem about this movie is its story. I know people who read my review may not be find it useful because I criticized it from the point of my view in a way they disagree. My rate is 5/10.

Ersbel Oraph The director, like the main character, wants success. And she did it. Only by opening the door out not the door in. She got the big prize. And that is about it. The bureaucratic machine has eaten her whole. Don't get me wrong. I hope I am wrong.I have seen comments about the rush ending. The ending is not rushed. It is a natural consequence. And the whole script is made following a opera or simple drama. Only both classical drama and the opera are the ways white Europeans see as the highest refinement in entertainment. The film was made to please the eyes and the minds of old f*rts that fill the juries and the commissions that are specialized in turning the taxpayer money into alms for those who know how to please.There are social statements, but they are void and not offensive, like the small exercise in accountancy at the beginning: "how much you make? 1000€? The rent is 800. Pay the food and at the end of the month you have nothing." It is true. It is said. Yet it says nothing about the system. Police brutality is never touched. And the final confrontation with the cops is a ballet rehearsal.I have loved how expressive and full of life Oulaya Amamra can be. But her character has a split personality. In a country where when you can boil an egg on the asphalt the women still wear a bra and two tank tops, she can go to a club with no bra and a generous cleavage. She can in one scene have a hard time coping with the promiscuity of her mother pointing out her decision to fight that, and in another scene go lure a violent man with sex.In the end there is no story. What does the character want? That's easy. Money. But money to do what? And here is where the director-writer fails. All these are stock characters from television. The youngster with no future. The girls who sell a vagina hoping for the better. The opportunist drug peddler. The unfit mother who god forbid has sex with more than her lawfully given husband and does not read books on parenting. All these are silhouettes on TV. And the story is not on screen but in the white old man's mind, the one who handles the taxpayer money. Sure, there are drugs in the movie. But these are only a device. The stereotype of the easy money. The drugs are not escapism from the ugly world outside, as there is no ugly world outside. The high rise building is only the backdrop to remind the viewer of the 5 o'clock news.It could have been a 100 minutes story on a budget with only Oulaya Amamra, Déborah Lukumuena and Jisca Kalvanda. Without state money it could have been done precisely a decade ago when the director's association was made. But that association is another way to make a living dancing with the state and tearing the stories apart while moving from place to place to please white old men in power. Of course Cannes wouldn't have looked at such films. But who knows? In that dreamt reality 2016 would have been the production year of a third or even a fourth feature movie on a budget.Yamina Benguigui has started much better. Stronger films, more accessible stories. And today she is yet another bureaucrat managing other people's money. She has more than one boss and she has to please to receive the money she hands down. Her last work was for TV and that was 7 years ago. And she is not the only one eaten by the machine.A sad broken story made into a ladder.Contact me with Questions, Comments or Suggestions ryitfork @ bitmail.ch

cinephiley I go to the cinema to laugh, cry, hate, feel. This what "Divines" provided me. Actresses can be describe with only one word: Amazing. I didn't expect anything special seeing this movie and what a slap in the face. A wonderful pleasure, the kind of cinema I haven't seen for a decade. I felt so many emotions. I was among the character and not on a sit. Divines is magic and Divines was the movie that deserved an Oscar for 2017. A must see, you won't regret it. This movie is all about friendship and has nothing to do with Paris' Suburb. The suburb is only a decor. A detail. All actresses and actors did an amazing job.£ Thank you Houda, the film maker for making us such a beautiful movie.