La nouba des femmes du mont Chenoua (1979) User Reviews

I have lost 2 hours of my life and my sanity

[futurehar_stu · 1/10 · 12 February 2007]

Under no circumstances should anyone subject themselves to this atrocious film. It is the worst film I have ever seen! There is essentially no intelligible plot, little dialogue and the picture quality just made it all that much worse! There is random music random, direction-less driving to someplace concerning the girl's family or history-it's not really clear. The beginning doesn't even have subtitles, so unless you know how to read Arabic, you will be lost from the very beginning. Under no circumstances should anyone watch this film, as you will go bald and make you go crazy. I didn't think I could hate a film this much and am amazed at myself for getting through it alive. If you must watch, fast forward, because half of it is senseless driving with no dialouge anyways.

I am 22 years old with 2 hours of suffering.

[Son_of_Mansfield · 1/10 · 16 February 2006]

I know that this was written and directed by a famous Algerian writer, Assia Djebar, and that it is an honest attempt to voice her opinion in the style that she writes her novels in, which is a free flowing style with an emphasis on thought over plot, but the movie is so BORING that I don't care. Assia Djebar's book, So Vast The Prison, is a series of images with little dialog that does have a clear plot, it just isn't plot driven. This film has looped dialog, looped music, and a lot of traveling to nowhere. It that the point? If so, couldn't we have gotten nowhere a little quicker? The only thing that I know is that the main character's husband was thrown off his horse and that is why he is in a wheelchair, but it took nearly an hour just to explain that. I think this is a case of not having enough voices in the room during production. Assia Djebar is clearly a talented writer, but she don't know jack about making a movie.

Musical chronic of a recovered land

[jeanmarcboulard · 8/10 · 17 October 2015]

The film is mesmerizing as a song, from which it borrows form and time-pace, memory-filled present. An hymn to women too, which are shot as candles in a newborn landscape and given the homage they deserve during the war and more widely. Proud and strong, unclassifiable. For people who are able to receive faces, to wander about in landscapes as in cinematographic categories without bias (Is it fiction, documentary, politics, etc... ? It's just a film, probably musical before all). The general matter has something oneiric, time-freed memory and the dead, evoked throughout the film, are given by the magic of cinematography and shot landscape the tomb, after-life they won : oceanic sun-light and natural tumulus.