Photo: Najat Benssallem as Raja and Pascal Greggory as Fred in Jacques Doillon's Raja
Jacques Doillon's supremely written, remarkably acted Raja is a romantic tug-of-war that brings to mind both a Shakespearean comedy of errors and Bernardo Bertolucci's undervalued interracial smackdown Besieged. The director's eponymous heroine goes to work with her cousin at a pasha in Morocco owned by a lazy, intellectual Frenchman. The suave, persistent Fred (Pascal Greggory) is drawn to her ordinariness and the 19-year-old Raja (Najat Benssallem) is smitten by his sexiness. Their innocent crush quickly escalates into a war of bitter jealousies, sparring libidos, and brutal miscommunications. Doillon makes excellent use of widescreen. His airy, deceptively simple compositions frequently isolate Greggory and Benssallem to either side of the frame, emphasizing the wide economical and cultural split that exists between the two. Both characters repeatedly infringe upon the other's space, but just how much are they propelled by love, greed, and the eroticisation of the other's race?
Jacques Doillon's supremely written, remarkably acted Raja is a romantic tug-of-war that brings to mind both a Shakespearean comedy of errors and Bernardo Bertolucci's undervalued interracial smackdown Besieged. The director's eponymous heroine goes to work with her cousin at a pasha in Morocco owned by a lazy, intellectual Frenchman. The suave, persistent Fred (Pascal Greggory) is drawn to her ordinariness and the 19-year-old Raja (Najat Benssallem) is smitten by his sexiness. Their innocent crush quickly escalates into a war of bitter jealousies, sparring libidos, and brutal miscommunications. Doillon makes excellent use of widescreen. His airy, deceptively simple compositions frequently isolate Greggory and Benssallem to either side of the frame, emphasizing the wide economical and cultural split that exists between the two. Both characters repeatedly infringe upon the other's space, but just how much are they propelled by love, greed, and the eroticisation of the other's race?
