Zakia is beautiful, active, passionate. She presents a women's television programme. She meets up with her lost friends, Leila, Keltoum and Ghita. The four women promise to keep in touch, to support one another... thereby enabling the film to delve into their private lives, unearthing unexpected meetings, hopes, compromises, a violent husband, passions, and pains... Things accelerate in the second half of the film, when the director drops his purely sociological slant, speeding up the rhythm, and entering the romantic realm: whilst a drama which makes all the women react takes place in the private sphere, Zakia's television programme comes under threat. This excursion into the public sphere stops the film from falling into a purely intimate description by highlighting the collective message: the currently restrictive limits of the emancipation of Moroccan women. It is precisely the interlinking of the two registers in a tight montage that gives the film the vitality that makes it work: the four women avoid stereotypes and their solidarity unites them in a kind of captivating ballet. It thus hardly matters that the image singularly lacks any poetry, as these interrelated destinies are most captivating.

Olivier Barlet