TIFF Review: “Sirât”

There is something that happens in the second act of Sirât that is brutal and shocking, completely transforming what had been an engaging metaphysical journey through obsession and self-determination into an exploitation fest. It’s a narrative transition that ruins the excellent cinematography and performances. There’s no returning from either the event or the casual way the film trivializes it through the quasi-comedy of what follows. Sorry, director/co-writer Oliver Laxe and co-writer Santiago Fillol (whose last collaboration, Fire Will Come, I far preferred): you lost me and I never came back.

The title refers to an Islamic term for the narrow bridge between paradise and hell. Other than this and the fact that the movie is set in Morocco, religion plays no direct role in the story. Or at least, no organized major faith does. Instead, the belief system of most of the characters revolves around the complete escape from societal conventions they seek through their mobile electronic-music dance raves. Radical personal freedom is the point here, no matter the consequences.

Luis (Sergi López, Pan’s Labyrinth) is a father looking for his missing daughter, from whom he has not heard in months but who was part of the rave culture. Accompanied by his pre-teen son, Esteban (Bruno Núñez Arjona), and elderly family dog, Pipa, he makes his way through the gyrating crowds grooving to fast-paced rhythms and booming bass below desert cliffs. It’s quite an impressive visual backdrop for the opening. Subsequent locations do not disappoint, either.

Eventually, Luis comes across some friendly enough fellow Spanish speakers (most of whom are French, like Laxe) who seem to think that his daughter might be at the next rave. When the military shows up to close down the party and announce that major hostilities have erupted between multiple entities, Luis decides on a whim to follow these reluctant guides further into the wilderness, hoping they will lead him to his absent child. They do everything to dissuade him, but he and Esteban are undeterred.

The ragtag group’s wanderings provide Laxe with an excellent opportunity for a North African travelogue, which he does not waste. Accompanied by a booming soundtrack, the vehicles drive over treacherous dirt roads and through alarmingly deep rivers. Their geographical destination is never specified; it’s someplace further away. Luis and Esteban follow, without knowing what comes next, World War III apparently breaking out in the larger world (according to radio reports).

Until everything changes. And when that happens, the mixed tones of adventure and light humor clash, and not in a moving or successful fashion. Rather, the plot twist resembles a cheap trick. Like the characters, the filmmakers have never had a clear cinematic terminus in mind. And while that makes the aesthetics fit the content, it also points out the futility of the exercise. Sirât becomes a gorgeous hunk of nothing, with merely the trappings of meaning that ultimately prove empty. Nice beat; poor dancing.

Christopher Llewellyn Reed

Christopher Llewellyn Reed is a film critic, filmmaker, and educator, as well as Film Festival Today's Editor. A member of both the Online Film Critics Society (OFCS) and the Washington DC Area Film Critics Association (WAFCA), and a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic, Chris is, in addition, lead film critic at Hammer to Nail and the author of Film Editing: Theory and Practice.