Rawan M. ElBanna

This is almost like watching an 18th century painting come to live. Sublime. Granted that watching this will most certainly make you yearn to travel back in time where everything was peaceful, idyllic and wholesome in its own right. From the nights spent by the candlelight or by the warmth of a fireplace, to the homemade remedies, to the bonfires, to the spacious setting within the walls of a home and outside, yet managing to make you feel as snug as you could ever be. And let's not start on the mystical noise generated by the thrashing waves of the vast ocean. Perhaps more satisfying than any original score. An outcry of the magnificence and beauty of a woman. From the curvatures of her bosom, to the natural, miraculous processes that take place within this phenomenal body of hers: menstruation, pregnancy and abortion. One can't help noticing the pregnancy that takes place with the total, indeed intentional, evaporation of the male factor. Without even a so cliche question as: "Who is the father?" As the three women cooperate to produce the abortion procedure on a painting, one can't deny the holiness and shivers this scene initiates. At the feast, one almost feels like one is taken to this nearly Utopian village where all the inhabitants are only women. Content women. And as if all that is not enough to woo you. It is all woven, intricately, with a stellar love story that is verbatim elevated to the level of a work of art displayed on a portrait in a museum. The eyes of a lover memorizes the impenetrable details of their beloved, profoundly. Not just the details of the face, but those of the spirit, then as aphoristically put, they get all that displayed on a work of art that captures the lifelike gaze of their beloved on canvas. Divine. While the painter is immersed in delivering the essence of her beloved, she is not the only one who has her profound details memorized. Her beloved is equally studying her, trying to save a human copy of her image on her mind. It is not a surprise at all that each single frame of this movie stands as a wholesome frame of artistic expression on its own. You may forget how to breathe in many scenes indeed, but then, with the very last sentence uttered in the film: "She didn't see me," together with the rise of the orchestral symphony, well, to simply put it as an indisputable fact: the-skip-of-a-heartbeat effect, to be felt by the spectator, was part of the script all along. Not for the purpose of repeating myself, but yea, SUBLIME.