‘The Damned Don’t Cry’ Review: A Loose Remake of Pier Paolo Pasolini Finds New Blood

Adam Solomons
·4 min read
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In Morocco, homosexuality is banned and just one in five citizens find gayness “acceptable,” at least according to a 2019 poll. An Elton John concert twelve years ago broke the law, but was personally approved by Morocco’s king. Still, Grindr thrives, and third-largest city, Tangier, has a decades-long tradition as a haven for LGBT+ culture in North Africa.

Morocco thus makes a fitting setting for British sophomore director Fyzal Boulifa’s challenging melodrama “The Damned Don’t Cry,” a loose remake of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s “Mamma Roma,” which was nominated for the Golden Lion sixty Venice Film Festivals ago. But selectors in this year’s Giornate Degli Autori sidebar program did not place Boulifa’s film out of sentimentality alone. “The Damned Don’t Cry” is excellent, asking tough questions about society and morality without easy answers or neat conclusions. Non-actors populate the cast, performing terrifically, in one of many nods to the neorealist tradition out of which Pasolini’s film emerged.

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Aïcha Tebbae and Abdellah El Hajjouji star as sex worker Fatima-Zahra and her naive teenage son Selim, respectively. With a close but somewhat tense bond, Fatima-Zahra and Selim only have each other in the absence of Selim’s supposed late father, pictured nobly in a creased photo the boy carries around. But after being forced to leave Casablanca under urgent circumstances, they go on an accidental tour of the country, finding Christian and Muslim Morocco to be profoundly different places.

Less than one percent of Morocco’s 34 million population is Christian, but members of the religion, often Europeans, tend to be among the better-off. Crucially they are also more permissive, it appears, with Selim’s employment in non-Muslim parts of Tangier taking an unexpected turn when wealthy French immigrant Sébastien (Antoine Reinartz; “120 BPM”) asks for help with more than just interior decorating. When Selim takes his mother to Sébastien’s house in his absence, she says: “There’s only men’s things. Doesn’t he have a girlfriend?” The boy replies: “He doesn’t have time for that.”

Once-prudish Selim is forced to consider his mother’s own pragmatism, which sees her “fall for” kind but married bus driver Moustapha (Moustapha Mokafih) in an effort to put food on the table. Selim’s scowls toward his mother ring hollow once he begins offering sexual favors for cash — and, after some early reluctance, begins to quite enjoy it. As well as homosexuality, sex outside marriage is also illegal in Morocco, making Fatima-Zahra’s moneymaking hobby more than just a personal risk. Unsurprisingly, when she is mugged by one user of her services, she receives nothing from the police, aside from a lecture.

Yet realism in “The Damned Don’t Cry” goes beyond social injustices, shaping the film’s craft and its cast. Reinartz is one of few professional actors in the film, and non-actors Tebbae and El Hajjouji do most of the heavy lifting. Tebbae dominates early proceedings, with El Hajjouji’s plucky teen becoming the film’s protagonist as he grows up and begins to see the world differently. But it’s Mokafih’s performance in the secondary role that is the acting highlight, a truly wonderful piece of verisimilitude that could be straight out of Abbas Kiarostami’s legendary truth-or-lie drama “Close-Up.”

For its non-actors, “The Damned Don’t Cry” is a challenge easily conquered. The same is true for cinematographer Caroline Champetier (“Annette,” “Holy Motors,” “Of Gods and Men”), a big get for the young Boulifa. Champetier’s photography oozes class, offering style and steadiness to a story that could otherwise be told a little conventionally. A memorable nightclub scene set to Tarkan’s “Şımarık (Kiss Kiss),” “Beau Travail”-style, is gorgeously shot as well as movingly written and acted.

Champetier also lets Fatima-Zahra’s bold outfits sparkle, quite literally. A bright red sequined velour suit makes numerous appearances, and tells us almost as much about Fatima-Zahra as any of her lines. Selim’s clothing is equally indicative, if a little less interesting, made up mostly of matching tracksuits from major European brands.

The final piece in Boulifa’s impressive mosaic is an original score by Egyptian singer Nadah El Shazly, which makes for quite the soundtrack to Morocco’s immense desert land and brown cityscapes. El Shazly evokes the Egyptian New Wave cinema of the postwar years, particularly Youssef Chahine’s revolutionary realist melodrama “Cairo Station.”

Boulifa claims to have chosen El Shazly’s music as it expressed new radicalism and the traditions of North African cinema. It is her first score, and the first use of original music by Boulifa. Their work on “The Damned Don’t Cry” suggests the partnership could produce more regionally specific, emotionally universal collaborations. And if Boulifa’s second film is anything to go by, cinema has a new perspective both coherent and exciting.

Grade: A-

“The Damned Don’t Cry” premiered at the 2022 Venice Film Festival. It is currently seeking distribution.

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