Horses of Fortune

(KHUYUL EL-HATH) ((MOROCCAN))

By DEBORAH YOUNG

A Heracles Prods. production. Directed, written by Jillali Ferhati.
 

Reviewed at Carthage Film Days (competing), Tunis, Oct. 14, 1996. Running time: 83 MIN.

Mohammed ... Jillali Ferhati

His Brother ... Hamid Zoughi

Fatima ... Nezha Rahil

Blind Man ... Driss Karim

To judge by "Horses of Fortune," everybody in Morocco has emigration on the brain. Directed by Jillali Ferhati ("Beach of Lost Children"), pic is elegantly shot and acted but fairly devoid of content. It looks unlikely to go far beyond fest runs.

Mohammed (played as a tortured intellectual by Ferhati himself) is in Tangiers, desperately gazing across the straits of Gibraltar and scheming to reach France. It gradually becomes clear he's burned his bridges behind him, left his wife, perhaps even stolen money from work. Why? Because his great dream is to see a horse race just once in his life.

This seems like a flimsy motive, considering all the painful attempts he makes to get a passport, a visa, a ferry boat ticket and so on. But he's not the only one with a dream: There's a blind old man (Driss Karim) who hysterically insists on being taken along to see his long-lost son, and a young middle-class woman afflicted with wanderlust. The odd thing, for foreign auds, is how none of them seems motivated by anything as banal as unemployment.

Gilberto Azevedo's camerawork brings out the mysterious, exotic beauty of Tangiers and its Arab architecture. The houses people live in are so beautiful one can only imagine their disappointment when they finally reach Paris and end up in a cramped apartment in a housing project.

Camera (color), Gilberto Azevedo; editor, Helene Muller; music, Ali and Hassan Souissi; sound, Fawzi Thabet.