I missed this film when it was in the theaters and saw it on DVD recently. I was impressed with the raw and brutal portrayal of the oppression of a woman in a peasant religious culture. I am the product of a similar home from a geographically different culture. The dynamics were the same. I had a grandmother strikingly similar to the violent and domineering matriarch in the film. My mother struggled through domination and surfaced to be a scarred but liberated woman in her time.I feel the film did a great service to educate the uninitiated, those liberal or naive people in civilized societies, who think that these cultures are quaint and should be left to spin on their own web of unenlightened misery. I think the film portrays a small variety of reactions and variables which effect these violent and repressive cultures when their members immigrate into industrialized and socialized societies with aspirations to human rights for all.Given the massive inertia that must be overcome to get people, both immigrants and native residents, to be open, flexible, peaceful, generous and kind to each other, this film, beautifully produced, is a good primer. I recommend it.

As a documentary of the life of an Algerian family in the south of France, it was an interesting study of the lack of assimilation into French society. It was also revelatory as to the hierarchy of roles - a wife is nothing but a mother is everything. One wonders if the boys would have developed along the same lines.Almost every character seemed to be real, if a little exaggerated. The mother-in-law was superb.After thinking about the ending, I'm offering the suggestion that the "happy ending" was really a collection of her thoughts as she bled to death, having cut herself on the glass. The same sort of thing happens at the end of the film: Le Cercle Rouge, a classic, made in 1970.

It had been a while since I saw a good film. Watching "Inch'Allah dimanche" has ben refreshing. I am writing this comment while I listen to the closing music the fourth time, left with a taste of cinema and a feeling of sweet sadness. Man looks for a peaceful dwelling on the earth. Homesickness is a characteristic of human existence. We belong to where we feel at home.I must admit that there seems to be flaws in story and some problems with character development. However this originates from the nature of narrative style the director Yamina Benguigui prefers. You must have heard the literary writing style called "flow or stream of consciousness" to which James Joyce's "Ulysess" shown as an example. In the same manner, the film tells the story as a "flow of memories", most probably from a child's point of view. Reading an interview with Yamina Benguigui, I learn that the texture of the work is personal.Childhood memories are sometimes clear and sometimes obscure. And a child's perception of the events is mainly based on images. So this explains the power and emotional impact of some scenes in the film: for ex. Zouida's breaking the window with bare hand. Or think of the old French couple's garden. They compete for the best garden award. On the other hand, the Algerian family's garden is caotic. And the garden is not their own yet, the children can not play there as they wish. Around the symbolism of garden, we get a from-inside look at the emigrant psychology in its naive form through a child's eye.Anyway I don't want to go much into details. I recommend the film, hire it and make your own reading. It is worth to see. Acting is good, the music touchs. What else?! Congragulations to Yamina.

This one should be a real crowd pleaser. It's a women's film that evokes both laughter and tears. It's got a sympathetic Muslim protagonist, Zoina, who evolves into a feminist icon. The musical sound track is emotional dynamite, even though the lyrics are largely untranslated and may, one suspects, contain information that would illuminate the narrative. There are lots of fascinating cross-cultural devices. All this and a happy ending too. The only problem with Inch Allah Dimanche is that it's artistically spurious. The most glaring deficiency is character development. There is no explanation, for example, as to how this Algerian woman came to be such a cultural anomaly. We can see her growing anger and rebellion under the rain of abuse from her mother-in-law and husband, but where is the wellspring of prior experience? And, even more troublesome, how do we explain the sudden transformation of her heretofore stereotypical Arab husband in the final scene? Audiences, however, are likely love this film in spite of its obvious flaws.