Premiering in Un Certain Regard at Cannes, Laïla Marrakchi's film aims to shake up the often formulaic narrative of exploited migrant labor, and while it manages through a flawed protagonist making ill-judged decisions, there’s a narrative imbalance that works against the film’s overall strengths.
Plus IconJay Weissberg
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'Strawberries' Courtesy Lucky Number Stories about exploited migrant workers have become something of a mainstay in international cinema, rightly so given the tenacious hold this form of indenture — or worse — continues to have on the Global North. They also make for good cinema: who doesn’t want to root for people oppressed by the henchmen of rampant capitalism? Laïla Marrakchi’s “Strawberries” seeks to shake up the formula by making her protagonist a more flawed, at times even unlikable character who generates ambivalent feelings in the viewer, yet the script doesn’t delve deep enough into her bad choices. Subtlety is good, but a drop more insight wouldn’t go amiss. In addition, the extreme naïveté of the Spanish do-gooder lawyer is an out-of-place cliché in a film whose cinematic potency and multifaceted performances testify to Marrakchi’s strengths.
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