First feature film of now veteran director Merzak Allouache, Omar Gatlato presents itself as the diary of hero Omar Gatlato (played by very funny Boualem Benani), who directly talks to the camera, describing his everyday life: his home with all the family sleeping in the same room, his job, mostly sitting in an office dreaming about girls, his passion for egyptian movies and music, his love for a unknown woman seen on a window sill... The tone is joyous and lively, and the camera grips all the details which make of this portrait a very acute depiction of youth in Algeria in the midst of the 70's, torn between down-to-earth and day-to-day occupations and all this dreams of wealth provided by western civilization. In that matter, Allouache doesn't intent to be political in what he shows, or in a very underneath manner, since Omar's story mostly focuses on his sudden love for a girl whose voice he's heard on a tape. Difficulty to meet between boys and girls because of a cultural and religious heritage which divides the population in two distinct casts, male and female, promiscuity due to the lack of living space, ambitions often shattered by a country whose economics never could make it back since the independance : Omar Gatlato is a good testimony of an era now gone, and a perky and smiling look at a macho man such as they can only exist in arabic movies.
