La Maison jaune (2008)
Directed by Amor Hakkar

Film Review

La Maison jaune is one of those rare modest little films that captivates by virtue of its child-like simplicity and then leaves an indelible impression on your mind.  The story it relates is simple to the point of naivety but it is told with such understated compassion that it can hardly fail to move an audience.  This is the essence of the plot.  On learning of the death his son, a poor uneducated Algerian man living in an undeveloped region of the Aurès must overcome administrative and social hurdles to recover the body and return it to his homeland for burial.  He then faces an even greater challenge: to cure his wife of her depression.  On paper, this scenario may sound a tad trite but, with consummate tenderness, humility and a smattering of wry humour, director Amor Hakkar weaves this into a humanist fable of exceptional charm and poignancy.

Hakkar, himself a child of the Aurès, was inspired to make this film after his father's death in 2002.  To fulfil his father's wish to be buried in the country of his birth, Hakkar found himself up against a forest of red tape, of the kind which the hero of his film, Mouloud (played by Hakkar himself), has to cut his way through.  Prior to this, Hakkar made one full-length film, Sale temps pour un voyou (1992), and a documentary for French television about life in the Aurès.  La Maison jaune was made on a comparatively low budget with just one professional actor (Tounes Ait Ali, playing Mouloud's wife).

With its arresting location photography, La Maison jaune is as much an ode to the stunning Aurès landscape as it is a heartfelt testament to the power of love.  More than anything, the film celebrates the power of individual, the little man, to overcome adversity.  Mouloud may look pitiful driving his clapped out three-wheel Lambretta down a stretch of highway (especially when it is weighed down with a coffin), but he also appears strangely heroic, a latter-day Odysseus, equipped with a conqueror's resolve and a gladiator's fearlessness.  Driven by the best of motives he defeats the Fates and brings his son back from the dead, albeit for a few brief seconds.   What cannot be achieved when one has a pure heart and noble intentions?

Film Synopsis

12-year-old Alya is busy digging over a patch of barren land when policemen arrive and hand her a letter addressed to her parents.  The letter brings bad news: Alya's brother has been killed in the course of his military service.  When she hears of this, Alya's mother is devastated, but her father does his best to contain his grief.  With his daughter's help, he sets about healing the wound that fate has inflicted on them...