61st BFI London Film Festival
MOVIE REVIEW
Beauty and the Dogs (2017)
Two young women are jammed together in a toilet stall. Mariam (Mariam Al Ferjani) has ripped her dress; her roommate has brought a blue one for her to borrow. She gets changed; they fix their makeup and take some selfies after Mariam dodges a call from her father. They enter a club for a private party, which is in a beachfront hotel; and after a little welcome chat from someone at their university get down to dancing. There’s a cute guy. Mariam gets to talking to him and they go outside together.
This meet-cute-gone-wrong between Mariam and the cute guy (Ghanem Zrelli), whose name turns out to be Youssef, is depicted in nine single steadicam shots lasting around 11 minutes each. The technical skill it must have taken to put these shots together is worn extremely lightly. The pacing is not always great, but that gives us some breathing room during the worst night of Mariam’s life. Because once she left the hotel, she became the victim of a crime.