OIFF Film Review:  “Sandstorm” 

— by Paula Treneer —

An Ophir award-winning film shot in the austere landscape of southern Israel’s Negev desert, “Sandstorm” is about the challenges two women, a mother and daughter, each face in the male-dominated Arab Bedouin village culture from which they hail. A dramatic debut from female director Elite Zexer, the film has been selected as Israel’s official entry for this year’s Oscar awards.

The film’s introductory scenes of adolescent daughter Layla (Lammis Ammar) being taught to drive by her father Suliman (Haitham Omari) create an illusion of social openness on the part of her father, which is reinforced by a discussion over her scholastic efforts. This illusion is quickly dispelled in the next sequences surrounding his wedding to a second wife, and the role his first wife must play in the wedding festivities. For Western viewers unaccustomed to the wedding rituals of Arabic tribes, the separation of the men and women’s celebrations as well as the practice of polygamy underscores the cultural differences at the heart of the film.

The gritty realism of the hovel in which Suliman’s first wife lives with his four daughters is contrasted with the gaudy décor of his new home, but the film insufficiently explores the events leading up to his second marriage, leaving it to a few acerbic exchanges between him and his first wife Jalila (Ruba Blal-Asfour) to hint at long-running marital conflict. During the aftermath of the bridal feast, Jalila discovers Layla’s secret school-day romance with an appealing young man played by Jalal Masarwa, and forbids her daughter any subsequent contact with her boyfriend. Layla initially resists both her parents’ attempts to thwart her romantic involvement with a young man (seemingly inappropriate because he belongs to another “tribe”) with a rebellious defiance, which hints at a strength of character seemingly at odds with the cultural mores of this setting. Her mother’s initial outrage at her daughter’s libertine behavior turns into protective anger directed at her husband, whose casual selection of an “appropriate” husband for his daughter ignores his daughter’s appeal, her intelligence, her good looks. Jalila is subsequently “banished” by her husband, presumably for insulting his manhood during a heated exchange questioning his choice of a mate for his daughter, but the cultural implications of this act are drawn too subtly for many viewers to appreciate its consequences.

Rather than a feminist perspective, this film seemed to be adopting a quasi-anthropological viewpoint but without the accompanying documentary voiceovers, which would lend historical context or background to the customs highlighted here. Neither of the two female leads escapes the strictures of her environment; the final scene of the film appears to suggest that Layla’s independence will only be expressed through a tongue as sharp as her mother’s, while the men of her tribe decide her future.

The strengths of the film include the performances of the three leading actors, particularly Ruba Blal-Asfour’s facial expressiveness, hinting at emotions she cannot express. Viewers unaccustomed to Bedouin social customs should appreciate the opportunity to peer into their lives, which are generally hidden from Western observers.