“He eyed you up like a Bic Mac during Ramadan.”
Oulaya Amamra, the co-lead whose the younger sister of the director, is enormously promising in this brutal coming-of-age tale. Add her counterpart, Déborah Lukumuena, and I have one of my best friendship dialogue duets.
'Divines' is a female perspective digging deeper than Céline Sciamma did with 'Girlhood'.
'Divines' made me laugh and excited but the inevitable collapse gut-wrenched me because I know that darkness is a reflection of our real world. Inequality, for the losing side, is a living death sentence.
'Divines' joins the lofty 'Les Misérables' and 'La Haine' as our view into French inequality. It's possible that those equal or exceed the best ghetto crime dramas that the USA has to offer.
It's unfair to viewers that it has taken 9 years for director Houda Benyamina's sophomore to arrive. But ‘All For One’, something very different, is here, and stars the same ladies again. That’s a triple thank you from me.