O ctober 23. 2013 ®lf* Ç ortlanb (Observer Page tncouver '.st County Beaverton Al North Portland Inspired Determination women and gM s'inT audiA raU a 3 ■ O I ijONY S^l 1*^ J F 'I /Y " * * hery° Ung male f" end in the fllm ’WadJda’ ' a stofy that gives us a rare window into everyday life for ‘Wadjda’ offers windows into Saudi (and American) life by D arleen O rtega I im agine that A m erican audiences watching "W adjda" - the first feature film shot entirely in Saudi Arabia and the first directed by a Saudi woman - will be doing a lot of clucking over how restrictive life is for Saudi women and girls. Yet when I scanned for review s after seeing the film, nearly all of them were written by men: Film criticism , like m ost other spheres o f influ ence in A m erican culture, is dom inated by m ale voices. I'm guessing that most of us would not even notice that fact. A film like this offers Am ericans some t t I k opportunities that we rarely get. M ost obviously, it gives us a rare window into everyday life for Saudi wom en and girls. D irector H aifaa al-M ansour gives us a fairly simple story of a m iddle-school-aged girl, W adjda — whose small rebellions evidence sim ply a desire to be herself - and fills that story with particular details. W adjda's determ ined self-expression is evident, for exam ple, in the hangers she has attached to the radio on which she listens to forbidden Am erican pop m usic; in the black Converse high-tops she wears under the long, shapeless gray dress that serves as her school uniform; and in her little schemes for earning the money she would need to buy a bicycle so that she can race (and beat) the boy with whom she shouldn't even be associating. But the Film also offers us an opportunity which I wonder if we are really up for - the opportunity for self-examination. It is easy for Am ericans to judge a culture like this because its flaws are readily apparent to us. How strange to imagine living in a society where a girl riding a bike is unheard o f because o f concerns that it will damage her fertility, or where a woman is not allow ed to drive a car! Yet part o f where the film succeeds is in dem onstrating how inevitable such lim ita tions seem to be for many m em bers o f that society, and how its norm s are enforced, even by those who are oppressed by them. A film like this, which deftly deconstructs a culture that seems alien, has the poten tial to awaken our sensitivity to m anifes tations o f oppression in our own culture. The film is perceptive about the stric tures o f the girl's life, and that o f her m o th e r, c la s s m a te s , an d te a c h e rs . W adjda's father mostly works and lives apart from her and her mother, a real beauty who works as a teacher but isn't allow ed to manage her own money or drive herself to work. Instead she must pay a driver who addresses her with the disdainful tone one continued on page IS