Elle est diabétique et hypertendue et elle refuse de crever

I'm always proud to be the first reviewer of a movie... especially when it comes from my country. So here it goes...

"She's got diabetes, hypertension and refuses to die" Well, the premise is all in the title of that Moroccan enjoyable little comedy that still managed to break a few taboos here and there and that has aged quite well.

To non-Moroccan dialect speakers, the original title works even better because the two diseases are named after their most "problematic" nutritional elements, it's "she's got salt, and sugar and doesn't want to die". Even the 'doesn't want' is a more inspired phrasing because the little catchphrase is regularly uttered by the main protagonist Najib who can't understand how that little lady that serves as his stepmother resists death after all, as if the biggest break she would give him is to just disappear and let him live in peace with his job, his money, his wife... and his mistress.

Of course, for the sake of our enjoyment, not only does the woman refuse to die but she's very much alive and truly tastes like something that's got both salt and sugar mixed together, and never wastes an opportunity to dismiss the poor Najib, played by Rachid El Ouali. It's one of these movies where the humor can get pretty repetitive but it miraculously escapes from that trap because Amina Rachid, one of cinema's most popular and competent actresses, gives herself entirely into that role, embodying the figure of the mother-in-law we love to hate with much gusto and a bravado that recalls a Louis de Funes in drag.

(and if you think that the 'obnoxious mother-in-law' is not a staple or Arab or Moroccan culture, you've got another thing coming)

Anyway, Lalla Khadija (Lalla is a respectful term of reference meaning mrs.) seems to owe her energy for the very existence of that human being she keeps dissing: for being late, for his managerial incompetence, for not being half the man her husband was and in the earlier scene where Najib vents his anger on the gardener (played by Mohamed Benbrahim) she puts him in his place again; indeed, he doesn't even have the privilege to shout at her staff, they belong to her. The logic here is implacable when you deal with an iron lady and Najib is both the unfortunate victim and the battery of his mother-in-law's hateful energy, caught between the rock in place of her heart and a very hard place to live in, even if it's in Casablanca's upper class suburbs.

Najib is in such a powerless situation, without any latitude so that the only escapism he founds is when he meets Leila, the beautiful Asmaa Khamlichi who became an instant sex-symbol after the film and makes quite a contrast with his wife, a childish spoiled girl who sucks her thumb, her name is Souad. And the story is based on his back-and-forth trips between Leila's villa and his own and all his attempts to get away with it with lies and accidents. The situation is rather banal and countless Vaudevillian farces have been based on that premise but it's not much what happens than the way poor Najib gets caught in the craziest situations and get himself out of the mess Moroccan-style: forced to bribe people so many times you'd wonder what's left from his salary.

Of course this is the kind of film that demands suspension of disbelief given the number of contrived coincidences the script is full of: Leila is Najib's neighbor, Souad and she fall pregnant at the same time and deliver the same day, but director Hakim Nouri lays his card in a way that makes us part of the game whole sole purpose is to give the roughest deal to poor Najib. It's the kind of character with a likability factor that is undeniable and because we like him, we love to see him going through these ordeals, he's like a cheating and lying man but in constant redemption.

There's a lot of gags in the film, mostly conducted by the dry retorts of Khadija and the way she even shouts at her maid Zhor (Zhor Slimani) or telling her daughter to shut up. But there's something of a truth ringing in the film, and the social comment isn't too far. In one Vaudevillian film where you've got the obligatory moment of the lover hiding in the closet, you've got a certain view on corruption as the way rich people can get away and the way the poor can expect to improve their life with the bakshish, there's also the hypocrisy of hidden prostitution and the way some women are taken care of by sugar daddies... and there's the broken of "sport" anyone can practice, as long as it's carefully hidden.

(In an very interesting scene you've got Zhor sneaking at night to get in Brahim's room, a way to tell that everyone needs a little "sport")

It's a Moroccan farce elevated by great comical performances that never go over the top, other gags involve the use military march whenever Khadija walks to her office and a hilarious photo of her hanging right over poor Najib like a Damocles sword, with her expression as a constant reminder of the danger awaiting him whenever she comes. And I still remember back in 2000 in the theater when everyone was laughing and we felt like Moroccan cinema was entering a new phase with more raunchy and racy scenes and a groundbreaking handling of infidelity ending with a final fourth-wall breaking from Najib telling us to cope with our own mother-in-laws now before bursting into laughter.

He was part of the game all along.

While not a flawless masterpiece, the film is a Moroccan comedy gem and a sad reminded of the talent of the late Mohamed Benbrahim and Amina Rachid who sadly in 2019, "didn't refuse to die".