a top tier, 5 star 3 star movie, perfectly balanced midness, some joke groaners and comedic distance miscalculations but there's something quaint about it and quite a hopeful message about the need to be kind one another. it is difficult to do earnestness and optimism in modern cinema but aziz nails it. there’s a scene where keanu reeves is a jaded angel working as a dishwasher who takes up smoking and starts cursing in spanish and it is so goddamn funny lmao idk, i really liked this movie, pleasantly surprised

this film deserves so much better than the witch-hunt controversy that stalked it. so many of the negative criticisms range from "you obviously didn't watch this" to uncharitable to culturally illiterate. this is a pensive film about the far-too-early sexualisation of French girlhood juxtaposed with the religious conservatism of West-African/Islamic practices which examines the pincer-like pressure of misogyny clamping down from two, opposing cultures. I really hope one day that people will put their preconceived outrage and bombastic pearl-clutching aside and watch this with an open mind–you'll find it uncomfortable but deeply profound if you actually engage the film on its own terms.