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‘Norah’ Review: A Striking Debut About Artistic Repression in ’90s Saudi Arabia
In 'Norah,' director Tawfik Alzaidi gets bogged down by details, but his silent portraits of a teacher and his muse are often breathtaking.
The story of a schoolteacher tasked with introducing literacy to an isolated village and his unlikely relationship with a precocious young girl, the movie suffers from a few early-career filmmaking tics, which prevent all its pieces from all neatly fitting together. Through gentle close-ups of both characters, Alzaidi, cinematographer Shaun Harley Lee and editor Mounir Soussi weave together a series of silent, static moments, during which the mere act of creation and the desire to be seen become downright dangerous, should the village leaders learn that a young, unmarried girl has been posing for an artist’s easel. Despite these detours, “Norah” proves to be an exceptionally strong debut from a filmmaking voice who reaches into his not-so-distant cultural past in order to reflect on his present (and his future) as a creator in a place where artistry can be risky and fraught.
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