Cannes. Adhen.

"An industrial pallet-repair operation on the outskirts of Paris becomes a microcosm of Muslim immigrant hopes and tensions in Rabah Ameur-Zaimeche's Adhen," writes Variety's Jay Weissberg.

"Shifting from a gentle reverie on the joys of Islam to the strain of a worker/boss conflict, pic seems created more to take advantage of the visually arresting space than to further storytelling ideas."

"Rabah Ameur-Zaimeche has addressed the schizoid nature of the clash of French and Algerian cultures before, most notably in the lovely Bled Number One, set in a small Algerian village," writes Howard Feinstein in Screen Daily. "In Adhen, traditional religion comes up against contemporary capital in a factory that makes red pallets and repairs trucks in a depressing industrial zone just outside Paris. There is so little structural tension in the film, however, that one might characterise its tempo as dramatic slack. The subject might have made for a thoughtful documentary, but as fiction Adhen is an exercise in ennui."

"Set amid a grim industrial Parisien netherworld, this Directors' Fortnight entry illuminates the vanity of a businessman who seeks to win the acceptance of Allah by erecting a mosque in his honor," writes Duane Byrge in the Hollywood Reporter. "Filmmaker Rabah Ameur-Zaimeche has invigorated this insight into false religiosity with warmth and raw humor."

Online viewing tip. An interview, but without subtitles.

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Coverage of the coverage: Cannes 08.

Last year: Cannes @ 60. And Cannes 06.

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Posted by dwhudson at June 1, 2008 7:50 AM