Ferroukhi's 'Le Grand Voyage' to open JiFFest 2005

Paul F. Agusta, Contributor, Jakarta

A young French-Moroccan man reluctantly drives his father 3,000 miles from France to Mecca so the old man can complete the haj, and in the process begins to understand his father more than he ever could have imagined he would want to.

This tale of faith, duty, devotion and the complexities of an at first seemingly ambivalent father-son relationship is told in Ismael Ferroukhi's Le Grande Voyage, which will open this year's Jakarta International Film Festival (JiFFest) on Dec. 9.

An unusual European road-trip, traveling the back roads of France, Italy, Slovenia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Turkey, and Syria, before eventually reaching Mecca in Saudi Arabia, this film about one man's ending and another man's beginning crawls in some segments, and gets ahead of itself in others.

A scene in which the strictly traditional father throws away his modern-minded son's cell phone during a rest break on the first leg of the journey comes before a clear picture of the protagonists' characters has been painted. This preempts any real description of the reason for the strained nature of their relationship.

As a transgenerational portrait of the Muslim diaspora, featuring a Moroccan family displaced to the south of France, this 2004 film written and directed by little-known filmmaker Ismael Ferroukhi, tells the moving story of two generational and cultural worlds colliding.

One of the film's main strengths is its interesting take on the emotional distance between the father and the son, both of whom have had to struggle with the difficulty of living in two cultural contexts at once, with the father opting to embrace even more strongly the ways he was taught as a child, and the son eagerly soaking in the world he knows best.

Another real selling point for this film is the raw, but elegant cinematography. Besides the fascinating shots of the back roads and rest stops of Europe, with some really breathtaking images, the tight shots of father and son in their cramped mini- station wagon tell volumes about the tense distance between them.

The age-old struggle for a meeting ground between traditions and generations, definitely already well-traveled territory in recent world cinema (most memorably in two films shown at JiFFest, Monsieur Ibrahim in 2003 and Gegen Die Wand in 2004), is rehashed here in a rather unenlightened manner.

Although the problem is clearly stated, no new ground is broken and nothing is fully resolved.

There is far too much stereotypical, 21st-century brat behavior on the part of the son, played somewhat melodramatically by French actor Nicolas Cazale.

This stands in harsh contrast to the impeccably subtle performance by Mohamed Majd, who conveys the desire of any aging patriarch to keep his prodigal son in the fold.

The scene in which the father declares to his son in frustration, "Because you can read and write does not make you any less stupid," brings into sharp contrast the desire of the father to connect and the arrogant reluctance of the high school- age son to acknowledge that anyone but himself might have a handle on the truth about life.

Another pivotal scene between the two men that depicts the stark difference between a mature soul and a developing one starts with the son's enquiry as to why they didn't just fly to Mecca instead of driving.

The father responds: "When the waters of the ocean rise to the heavens, they lose their bitterness to become pure again."

The son's puzzled reply is: "What?"

The father then explains: "The ocean waters evaporate as they rise to the clouds. And as they evaporate they become fresh. That's why its better to go on your pilgrimage on foot than on horseback, better on horseback, then by car, better by car than by boat, better than boat than by airplane."

It is such interchanges between the father's traditional eastern views and the son's western pragmatism that really make this film worth watching, along with its rich cinematographic content and subtle, unimposing, but highly effective musical score.

Although sometimes more reminiscent of a light snack of rhetoric than a full plate of enlightenment, this film does provide a respectful view of Islamic teachings and traditions not often seen today.

(Le Grand Voyage is scheduled to be screened again at Graha Bhakti Budaya, Taman Ismail Marzuki, Central Jakarta, on Dec. 10 and Dec. 17, and at Djakarta Theater, Central Jakarta, on Dec. 15. Click on www. jiffest.org for more details.)