Movie Review: Hands and Cloth by Roger Moore
There was something profound in Albert Brooks' failed odyssey Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World, a film that searched for humor within a religious culture that, to most Westerners, seems utterly humorless.
So any attempt at lightness coming out of the Islamic world can be celebrated, even if the laughs aren't as frequent or as big as you'd like.
Omar Chraibi's film, Hands and Cloth is a comedy about a rural Moroccan puppeteer going to arts school in the big city. The chief virtue of this slight and gentle-hearted, fish-out-of-water comedy is its novel setting and the world the film takes us into.
ÖMnaouer (Tarek Bakhari) is a 20something puppeteer whose elaborate shows, which he builds sets for and molds puppets out of clay and cloth to perform in, depict a fantasy version of the life he leads in his tiny village. Almost everybody in town curls up in front of the stage when he sets to work. He'd love to get better at this, maybe good enough to earn a laugh or two from his schizophrenic mother.
But the local sheik has other designs. Mnaouer has talent, ambition and a vivid imagination. He should go to the capital city, get into arts school.
"You are our ambassador," the sheik lectures. Go, do well, because "we want to value what we are."
So the young man with a big imagination auditions to get into arts school and, shades of Fame, discovers that a wacky cross-section of Moroccan youth is trying to get in, too. He befriends the fast-talking Maati (Abdellah ÖDidane, hilarious), who goes by the nickname "Nmoutana" and figures he can get in by dressing like and impersonating Al Pacino's Tony Montana from Scarface.
"Say 'Alllooo to my leetle friends!' "
And Mnaouer also meets the woman of his fantasies (Rim Chemaou), an actress/dancer he envisions as his Tinkerbelle.
Director Chraibi serves up bizarre on a budget when he sends Mnaouer into magical realism idylls, envisioning classmates as live-action puppets and seeking an old hermit, the only other villager to get out of his Neverland.
Hands and Cloth, in Arabic and French with English subtitles, has a few winning sight gags, some funny characters and touches of wordplay aimed more at native Moroccans. But the film, opening this weekend at the Plaza Cinema Café, is just funny enough that you kind of wish Albert Brooks had gone to Morocco instead of Pakistan and India in his fruitless search for laughs.
Hands and Cloth Cast: Tarek Bakhari, Rim Chemaou, Abdellah Didane Director: Omar Chraibi Running time: 1 hour, 34 minutes Industry rating: Unrated, some subtitled profanity
