If you happen to like Flamenco music and/or North-African music, you will enjoy this film just for this. I happen to like both and found myself watching at 10-minutes-long scenes of just music and dance without being bored and being on the contrary fascinated (the Gnawa trance scene is properly amazing). Some lines of the scenario could have been developed though. The two characters are both going to Algeria looking for their roots. But she's the daughter of an Algerian whereas he's the son of two French who used to live in Algeria when it was still French. And despite this he seems to be the one feeling the most at home when they finally reach Algeria. Highlighting that identity is not about genes, but a social construct emerging from education, familial history and personal history (at the very least). Highlighting also the difficulty of being between two cultures, and the difficulty of being always sent back to a culture people ascribe to you because of your biological roots, putting you in a box doing so. Anyway this is something just showing on the surface briefly. I am not sure Gatlif was intending to explore this, I feel rather that the principal character of the film is music, especially when I remind myself that Gatlif also wrote the soundtrack. However if he wasn't intending it, this would be somewhat more remarkable, because we could assume Gatlif's subconscious is expressing itself here, the director being himself a former French of Algeria. But this would be exactly what is problematic in how the feminine character is welcomed: assigning feelings according to origins, without knowing anything of the person's history. So I won't assume this and will stay on the great feeling left by the trance scene: fascinated. And will consider definitely that music is the hero here, because music originating long ago like Flamenco and Gnawa is far more than entertainment and can even be a catharsis tool.
Review of Exils
