Hideous Kinky

Though fresh from her Titanic experience, Kate Winslet is no drippy hippy, bringing a refreshing feistiness to her role and looking fetching swathed in diaphanous layers. As her two daughters, Bella Riza (Bea, the wide-eyed younger one) and Carrie Mullan (Lucy, the sensible one) are brilliant discoveries--unselfconscious, charmingly quirky, and enjoying a camaraderie that belies their difference in characters. Completing the family unit is Julia's lover, the endearingly unreliable Bilal (a fiery performance from Saïd Taghmaoui). When the money runs out, their adventures begin and the resilience and practicality of the girls is contrasted throughout with the dreaminess of their mother, her sense of duty vying with her quest for self-discovery. Visually, it's a veritable feast as we're pitched from the color and cacophony of the marketplace to the dusty harshness of the mountains. And that elusive title--which is never explained in the film--is in fact a phrase coined by the girls as a term of approbation. --Harriet Smith

'Hideous Kinky' tells the story of a British young woman who with her two little daughters leave the boring and grey London and her poet husband to go to a sunny and exotic place in Morocco in the early 70s. Her idea is to find a Sufi guru who will instructs her in the annihilation of Ego. While seeking this man, she falls in love, lives in awful conditions and even has to be apart from one of her daugthers.

Needless to say that Winslet brings all the passion and power that this character needs. Her presence is magic and almost perfect. She is playing the kind of outsider anyone is expecting Winslet to play. It is impossible to imagine any other girl doing this role. Her two daughters are very good too, showing how lost they are in that place that is far from what they've been their whole lives.

The script is based on Esther Freud's novel, and it interesting to think that the source material was written by a descendent of Freud --the man who made the word Ego the mantra of XX century. Another thing that shines in the movie is the soundtrack. Full of songs from the late 60s, it gives the right tone to the story. Not failing to mention the Moroccan song that are terrific! A highly recommended movie, but for specific audiences.


Reminded me of my Childhood   June 12, 2003
Jedidiah Palosaari (Surf City, SoCal Province of the American Empire)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

Wonderful film, of Julia taking her kids from England, pulling them around Morocco in the early seventies, as she searches for wisdom and enlightenment in the Islamic mysticism of Sufism. The characters are well done, and the children *very* well acted, sweet and engaging. Here one gets a strong foretaste of travels to Morocco, with beautiful scenes of Marrakech and the desert.

Some drawbacks: brief nudity, Christians are portrayed too negatively, and one child is not entirely believable in her dislike of the free life in Morocco. Children have more imagination than that, and every child I have ever known enjoys adventure and travel at that age.

Some of the characters, and indeed some viewers, feel Julia displays poor parenting skills, for she pursues her spiritual enlightenment at the expense of raising her children. The one child mentioned above in the movie struggles greatly with the desire to lead a "normal" life. From my perspective, growing up in a Jesus Freak commune (a people who are even mentioned in this movie), Julia's actions are not only entirely appropriate, but beneficial to her children, allowing them to experience greater spiritual depth. Growing up, we continuously traveled around, in many countries, and I am grateful to my parents for such an experience. I recommend this movie not as a view into a woman who is not raising her kids right, because she is being too selfish; but rather a look at how one can provide far greater opportunity to one's children through bold adventure, and how many children miss out because parents do not provide that opportunity.