MIFF 2023 Film Review - Hounds
Images courtesy of Common State.
“He’s come in a red car, red means bad luck”.
Kamal Lazraq’s debut crime thriller is one of four Moroccan films shown at this year’s Melbourne International Film Festival. Hounds, is a bleak portrayal of the criminal underbelly within the Casablancan Medina, where no man is safe from mafia led antics, and this movie gives us a peek into how drastically lives can be changed within one night. It’s evident Lazraq knows exactly what he’s doing: the film is incredibly well acted, written and shot, feelings of claustrophobia emanate from the lens and there is not a single moment where the tension is lost.
Hassan and his son Issam are tasked with kidnapping a man who is caught up in the local dog fighting ring, a demanding job for a malnourished old man and his son. Before long they stuff up, and things take a dark turn as they continue on through the night trying to correct themselves. Along the way we meet many strange friends of friends of theirs, calling in favours or praying for them while standing on their roofs.
Hounds felt like a Safdie brothers movie, chronicling a night of crime with an anxiety inducing predicament, mixed with the bizarre encounters of weird and wise characters that are found in Abbas Kiarostami’s films. However, Lazraq digs deeper to blur the lines between religious ideology, morality, and the desperation of a man needing a bit of cash. Hassan particularly struggles with his actions, needing to make amends but ultimately putting them in more trouble than when they set out, and pushing Issam closer and closer towards a spiraling life of crime, where all it takes is owing one favor.
It is a harrowing concept, seen in films like La Haine (1995), in which, similarly, a boy born into an area of impoverished criminals has no fate other than what surrounds him. It’s even harder to watch as Hassan pushes his own son into this lifestyle -he is the greatest victim of the system, so far into it that he cannot even see how he is ruining his own child’s life, until it’s too late. The dog fighting seems to exist as a motif for the men running in this mafia circle, no one can be trusted, as they will eventually all turn out to be hounds.
Hounds screened as part of the Melbourne International Film Festival, running in metro cinemas August 3-20 and online August 18-27.
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