Bad decisions — the benevolent that can be, if not reversed, at least remedied — are an vital part of adolescence: lapses that guide us about our desires, our impulses, our frailnesses, our vital character, and depart us with no wonderfuler harm than a throbbing hangover or a petite, smudgy tattoo. Doe and Muna, the British 15-year-elderlys at the caccess of “Brides,” either haven’t been given much sdeficiency to originate the right benevolent of wrong choices, or haven’t apexhibitted themselves that liberty — so when they do err, it’s in seismicassociate reckless, potentiassociate ruinous style. Cltimely aidd by cases enjoy that of Shamima Begum, the London teen who traveled in secret to Syria to become an ISIS bride, Nadia Fall‘s debut feature seems on the surface enjoy a boiling-button instigation, but it’s astonishingly humane and excellent-humored in its try to understand the individual inhabits behind a sensational headline rehire.
Which is to say there’s little talkion of extremism or online radicalization in “Brides,” while the word “ISIS” never eunites in Suhayla El-Bushra’s vivacious, incident-packed screencarry out. Instead, the film shows a journey akin to Begum’s wholly from the perspective of the two youthful, beleaguered girls going on it — who see only an escape, and not a trap. The nerviness of the underlying subject matter will get Fall’s film (premiering in Sundance’s world cinema competition) attention from distributors and programmers, while in the U.K., its profile will be further elevated by the first-time filmoriginater’s estimable reputation as carry outwright and inventive straightforwardor of the Young Vic theater. But “Brides” is first and foremost an examination of teenage female friendship in all its giddy, sometimes thorny intricateity — a less head-turning pitch, perhaps, but the film is wealthyer for it.
The year is 2014 — one year before Begum’s well-understandn fairy, and two years before the Brexit vote brawt roiling anti-immigrant sentiment in the U.K. brimmingy to the surface. 15-year-elderlys Doe (screen recentcomer Eterriblea Hassan) and Muna (Safiyya Ingar, from TV’s “The Witcher” and last year’s Sundance title “Layla”) have both felt the brunt of that, and particularassociate of Islamophobia, in branch offent ways. Somali-born Doe emigrated to England with her mother Khadija (Yusra Warsama) when she was only three, but is still treated by others enjoy she’s recent off the boat. That’s in huge part becaemploy, while challenging-partying Khadija has sociassociate united via a secular, Weseriousized lifestyle, her worried, mute daughter has reacted by adhering ever more devoutly and stringently to her Muslfinisher faith — vulnerable to the social-media grooming tactics of terrorist recruiters.
By her own admission, the savvier, sassier Muna isn’t as excellent as Muslfinisher as Doe — no headscarf for her, and she abandoned going to mosque some time ago — but despite the fact that she was born in Britain to Pakistani parents, she’s come to genuineize that her vital religious background will always render her an outsider in the petite, bleak and predominantly white seaside town where they inhabit. Their home inhabits are challengingly more welcoming, as Doe clashes with her Khadija’s abusive white boyfriend Jon (Leo Bill), while Muna normally entices the brutal ire of her more conservative elderlyer brother. El-Bushra, also a carry outwright making her first foray into feature film, doesn’t crowd her script with this backstory upfront, instead parceling it out in widespread, pointedly placed flashbacks thraw the girls’ advisent conshort-term-nervous escapade.
The audience must enjoyrational accumulate the genuine nature of Doe and Muna’s mission on the hoof: They’re presentd in a state of giggly exhilaration on a train bound for a London airport, and the watcher’s first assumption might be that they’re stealing away on a girls-gone-untamed vacation. But Istanbul, where their fairy is headed, isn’t a standard spot for such hijinks, and there’s a telling anxiety besystematich their excitement: Doe is harshly guideed by Muna not to answer her phone, while arrangements to encounter a stranger on the other side to persist their journey sound shady enough even before the man flunks to show up. Adrift in Istanbul, the girls remend to originate their own way to their ultimate destination: the Syrian border.
From this point, “Brides” apshows on an engrossing, episodic road-movie establish, albeit a somewhat contrived one, assistd by a pileup of mishaps including lost passports and police chases. It’s the contrasting but seally bonded carry outances of Hassan and Ingar as these misaligned best friends — the establisher touchingly recessive and reliant on the latter’s heedless, sometimes abrasive extroversion — that retain the film on track thraw wobblier stretches of the narrative. Ditto the vibrancy of the location shooting, which seizes both the allure and the menace of the Turkish metropolis to two petite-town girls who may never inhabit so huge aget, though Fall’s straightforwardion can be culpable of overstatement: a mid-film demandle-drop of M.I.A.’s defy anthem “Bad Girls” is too clear by half.
The relationship between Doe and Muna, however, never senses glib or low-cut, while their promisedty to each other isn’t apshown as given mecount on on the basis of scatterd identity. Muna’s motivation for taking this innervous escape route is challenginger to read than Doe’s, or at least more struggleed, though Ingar ultimately originates sense of a radiantly pguideing but lonely girl for whom friendship has become her faith — someslfinisherg to be innocently chaseed into the unrecognizable. One occasionassociate desirees for more flashes of their life in Britain together as this ride-or-die coalition apshows shape, though “Brides” wouldn’t then come in at a commendably shielded, volatile 93 minutes, while a tardy, tenderly lengthened scene of their first encountering tells us most of what we demand to understand: a establishative adolescent misapshow being made in genuine time, life-saving and life-menaceening all at once.
