Nothing earth shattering happens in Fatima, but that doesn’t stop it from breaking your heart. The film revolves around three women: Fatima (Soria Zeroual)—a single mother and a Moroccan immigrant to France—and her two teenage daughters, Souad (Kenza Noah Aïche) and Nesrine (Zita Hanrot). In many ways, it’s an immigrant story. But the film’s central conflicts—communication and belonging—are universally sympathetic.
“I don’t speak French which is why we are looked down on…Because of the language it is as if [my daughters] have no parents,” Fatima eventually says. So we watch her sit through a parent-teacher conference for her younger daughter, Souad. The teacher speaks a few words about the teenager’s disappointing performance, before moving on to a lengthy conversation with a set of French parents about their child’s future. Fatima has no words to fight with.
The suspense inherent in such disenfranchisement is as tense, as frustrating as that of any more flamboyant tale about tragic miscommunications. Fatima is no Romeo and Juliet for irony, but its realist perspective pulls more convincingly on heartstrings.
While Fatima struggles to express herself to her daughters—and on their behalf—conveying motherly love ultimately precludes words. Her older daughter, Nesrine, has just moved out of the house and is studying to be a doctor. Fatima works long and difficult hours as a cleaner to help support her. When one of Fatima’s upper-crust clients suggests that Nesrine has a disadvantage considering her mother’s position, Fatima replies confidently, “I help my daughter too. I’m not a doctor, but I do her washing. I make food. I do a lot of things for her.”
The family’s situation becomes exponentially more difficult when Fatima suffers a fall and is unable to work. Unsurprisingly, however, she turns her misfortune into opportunity: she begins to write down, in Arabic, all of the things she has been unable to say to her daughters. The words deliver Fatima from any possible stereotyping. Her spirit is already strong in her actions. Her written words, even as they are symbolic of a collective experience, radiate individuality.
Her daughters, too, are endlessly compelling. Nesrine is determined, sophisticated in her love for her mother and her ambitions for her future. Souad is immature. Yet even her rebellion is morally stalwart: she stands up to a couple of “perverts” in the park; she cries in distress after she and Fatima get in an argument.
Philippe Faucon has produced a personal gem in Fatima. Hailing from Morocco himself, the immigrant to France story evidently hits close to home for the director. In fact, it is a favorite subject for Faucon, central in films like Samia, La désintégration and Dans la vie. But the subtle empathy with which Faucon treats the female characters in Fatima is remarkable. And the feature as a whole distinguishes itself from the more overt drama of the first two films mentioned above, without applying the comedic lens of the third. Fatima’s culminating triumph is understated. The flood of relief it brings to its characters, and likewise to the viewer, still overwhelms.
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