After an irregular Hollywood adventure with the survival melodrama “The Mountain Between Us”, Palestinian director Hany Abu-Assad once again delves into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with “Huda’s Betrayal”, which reaches the commercial theaters after passing through the Official Section of the 66th edition of the SEMINCI in Valladolid and the Toronto Film Festival. A return to the origins that goes from the social drama to a frenetic thriller with uncomfortable political overtones that exposes the fragile situation of women in a reality of eternal struggle.
Abu-Assad, who also signs the script, returns to the arid story with a proposal that freezes the blood in the first minutes of execution. Initially, the director deceives with what appears to be a social drama with a folkloric style set in the West Bank, in which a woman, Reem, goes with her baby to Huda’s hairdresser for a haircut and a hairstyle and, incidentally. , to tell some confidences to the hairdresser, with whom she seems to have some confidence, because she is tired of her husband’s jealousy. What seems like a moment of female fraternity in the face of a male-dominated society turns into a twisted thriller when it is revealed that Huda drugs her clients. to take compromising photos of them and then force them to become Mossad spies.
Inspired by real events. Thus begins a disturbing suspense that keeps the audience constantly in the balance, as the film, which itself has a Machiavellian beginning, takes another detour, further stressing the situation., both for the victim, Reem, and for his executioner, as Huda falls into the hands of the Palestinian Resistance, which shows no mercy for the women the hairdresser has forced to act as spies. Abu-Assad shows this a brutal cruelty of the alleged movement trying to break free from Israeli rule, in a film whose goal is to show how women on both sides are the weakest.
A thriller that keeps the audience in suspense until the end
In that portrait of how both the Israeli secret services and the Palestinian Authority Resistance use women as mere subjects of exchange, Abu-Assad makes an exercise of denunciation, showing a situation of maximum oppression, in which they are subjected to violence by both sides, being doubly victims, both of their executioners and of their alleged allies. In that portrait, the director performs a sort of reverse process with which he allows to create a series of mirrors. “Huda’s Betrayal” is closer to “Paradise Now” than to “Omar”, both nominated for an Oscar, especially since the director keeps the tension until the last minute, even though This is achieved thanks to Maisa Abd Elhadi and Manal Awad, both masterful.
Both become the two sides of an uncomfortable coin, in a film that exposes the seams of Palestinian society, which is portrayed in a kind of fratricidal struggle, in which the Israeli secret services intrigue to provoke a confrontation. In this aspect Abu-Assad leaves aside his apparent neutrality in the events he portrays, recalling that, despite everything, he continues to support one of the parties. However, which does not prevent you from enjoying a thriller that anguishes, due to the constant feeling of danger for its two protagonists. On the one hand there is Huda, a hunter who ends up being hunted; but it is Reem who transmits that sensation of constant fear, which keeps the viewer in an almost perpetual waitHere Elhadi dazzles, which ends up taking the show.
‘Huda’s Betrayal’ is an accurate return of Abu-Assad to his origins, showing that he is one of the directors who best exposed the complexity of the conflict between Israel and Palestine. A fratricidal story that puts in front of the mirror a loyalty struggle of uncomfortable and impossible resolution. A powerful thriller with a social foundation that highlights that, in conflicts like this, women are easy targets anywhere.which exposes the brutal machismo prevalent in the region, an even more complicated question of resolution.
Note: 7
The best: The interpretations of Elhadi and Awad both represent two opposite sides of terror. The first stands out in particular, acting in a series of blood-chilling scenes.
Worse: We end up seeing the same political outlook as Abu-Assad, which makes the film lose its ambiguity. It also doesn’t help that in its second part, despite maintaining the tension, it ends up with overly repetitive scenes.
Source: E Cartelera
