With her two precious daughters in tow, free-spirited Julia flees her stifling life in London for the promise of excitement, freedom and self-discovery in exotic Marrakech. In her single-minded quest for enlightenment and escapism, Julia falls into a steamy relationship with a handsome street performer, but her selfish determination may actually cause her to lose what she loves most.
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"Vibrant and Adventurous! A splendid role for Kate Winslet." - Janet Maslin, The New York Times
Two-time Academy Award - nominee Kate Winslet (Best Actress, Titanic; Best Supporting Actress, Sense and Sensibility, 1995) stars as a young mother searching for adventure, passion and enlightenment in early 1970s Morocco.
With her two precocious daughters in tow, free-spirited Julia (Winslet) flees her stifling life in London for the promise of excitement, freedom and self-discovery in exotic Marrakech. In her single-minded quest for enlightenment and escapism, Julia falls into a steamy relationship with a handsome street performer (Said Taghmaoui). But her selfish determination may actually cause her to lose what she loves most. Incidentally, the title Hideous Kinky, is derived from a free-association word game enjoyed by the two young girls.
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Hideous Kinky journeys back to the early 1970s to Marrakesh, that hippy mecca for everyone from Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix to Gillies MacKinnon, the director of this movie. Here you'll find one nice but confused middle-class young woman escaping the daily grind of a drab London with her two young daughters in tow. Whereas Esther Freud's book was told from the younger girl's perspective, the film-script places Julia centre-stage as she searches for what she describes wistfully as "the annihilation of the ego".
Though fresh from her Titanic experience, Kate Winslet is no drippy hippy, bringing a refreshing feistiness to her role and looking fetching swathed in diaphanous layers. As her two daughters, Bella Riza (Bea, the wide-eyed younger one) and Carrie Mullan (Lucy, the sensible one) are brilliant discoveries--unselfconscious, charmingly quirky and enjoying a camaraderie that belies their difference in characters. Completing the family unit is Julia's lover, the endearingly unreliable Bilal (a fiery performance from Saïd Taghmaoui). When the money runs out, their adventures begin and the resilience and practicality of the girls is contrasted throughout with the dreaminess of their mother, her sense of duty vying with her quest for self-discovery. Visually, it's a veritable feast as we're pitched from the colour and cacophony of the market-place to the dusty harshness of the mountains. And that elusive title--which is never explained in the film--is in fact a phrase coined by the girls as a term of approbation.
On the DVD:Hideous Kinky is presented in widescreen 16:9 with a Dolby Digital soundtrack. Additional features are disappointing minimal. As well as the usual theatrical trailer, there are brief interviews with the main players (though no marks for imagination as they're all asked the same questions) and approximately eight minutes of behind-the-scenes footage. There are no subtitles. --Harriet Smith
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