QUICK AND DIRTY: LIVE FROM THE RED SEA

Quiet an observant filmmaker Saad mingles with smugglers on the large border of Tunisia and Algeria. The landscape is vast and arid, and virtually impossible to monitor. Perhaps for that reason the criminals are mostly free to roam between the two Arab nations, bringing in fuel, currency and the occasional psychotropic substance (nicknamed “candy”). These gangsters operate inside their respective vehicles and in often in large numbers, creating a virtual motorcade.The goods are transported inside large gallons clearly visible to passersby. Except that there are hardly any. This is a sparsely inhabited region. The authorities are nowhere to be seen. In this lawless land, it is the villagers-turned-criminals who write the rules.

Most of the story takes place on four wheels, as the man scramble to get their goods across the border. Fethi is the person in charge, a man wanted by the very elusive police. He lives with his family inside a precarious shack. He has an emotional connection to his family and associates alike. And he establishes a bond with the non-intrusive Saad. Some sort of commercial bromance. The director is trying to raise money for his upcoming film. His experience with the smugglers suggests that he is also conducting an immersive film development exercise. Maybe he’s doing a fly-on-the-wall tope of documentary?

Algerian director Mohamed Lakhdar Tati’s third feature film sets to comment on male bonding and the dynamics of filmmaking, while also throwing in some punctuated thriller action. The testosterone-fuelled movie guaranteed to fail the Bechdel test, while also questioning some fragile notions of masculinity, such as the idea that your manhood determines your ability to grow up and have a job. “After my circumcision, I’ll become a man and drive a taxi”, boasts a young and enthusiastic male. Meanwhile, Saad reflects on the power dynamics of filmmaking: “I feel both free and oppressed, and that’s how I want my film to be”.

This is a film endeavour with big – and mostly unrealised – artistic ambitions. Sadly, the filmmaker and his co-writer Jean-Pierre Morillon do not establish an auspicious narrative. The film script is chaotic, and the intrigue is barely comprehensible. Even the movie title is confusing, if not pretentious. One character explains that “bin u bin” means “between and between”, in reference to the people trapped in the middle of nowhere, and unable to forge ahead. This is presumably in reference to the smugglers and the filmmaker being stuck in a rut, and in a permanent state of transition. I have absolutely no idea what what the second half of the title (“elsewhere the border”) is supposed to mean. And why these people have a pet hyena.

On the other hand, Bin U Bin is a visually and technically accomplished film. The moody cinematography of the desert is in line with the sombre characters. Some images are genuinely beautiful, in a landscape boasting craggy mountains, rifts, dirt roads, and houses made of stone. A wide shot of flatlands in the final scene is particularly impressive. The gently jarring music score (such as a repetitive tune in the final minutes) seeks to engage audiences by injecting a little tension into the movie. A momentous task without a cognitive storyline.

Strangely, the film opens and closes with titles cards in French, without a translation into either English or Arabic. I’m not entirely sure whether that was a careless omission, or an artistic device intended for enhanced crypticity. Either way, it doesn’t work.

Bin U Bin, Elsewhere the Border is in the Main Competition of the 4th Red Sea International Film Festival.