In many ways Exils is Winterbottom’s In This World in reverse. A subtly politicized road movie, it travels against the stream of immigrants making their way from Algeria to France. The script works in stages from the urban to the desperately rural, from cultural affluence to cultural anthropology, gradually pushing its aimless characters through a social looking glass. Zano, Franco-Algerian, and Naima, a thoroughly westernized Arab, decide on a whim to find his father’s birthplace in Algeria, leaving their urban flat with little more than the clothes on their back. Working as day laborers when they can, enjoying each other while they can’t, they travel through Spain to North Africa, and eventually to the birthplace of his father. At times their journey seems whimsical, as if the cultural alienation that has driven them from northern France leaves them stranded as homeless Adam and Eve figures, but Gatlif seems keen on grounding their experience in the daily struggle of the Gypsies and immigrants they encounter. One of the latter scenes in the films tracks them working forwards through a tide of immigrants fleeing North Africa en masse. If it weren’t for Gatlif’s gently bleached tones, this could be CNN footage.


Both seem to think that at their destination is some sort of historical memory more substantial than what their upbringing has offered them, but their initial experience of Algeria is markedly different. Zano’s family, anti-colonialists forced to move to France a generation ago, were much more intentional about maintaining their heritage abroad than Naima’s. She seems incapable of blending in, eagerly tossing off the traditional dress of the Algerian woman at her first chance, as it seems far too uncomfortable. Her loose tank top, while an everyday sight on any street in the western world, seems terribly out of place in these quiet streets.


As a film in reverse, Exils ends with what is most inexplicable. Less a resolution than an experience, Exils makes a complete shift from the vacant modernity of its opening to the primitive spirituality of their imagined past. In this blistering finale that elicited audible gasps from the audience, Gatlif pans around a passionate dancing ritual in which Naima is loosed of evil spirits. Zano watches both eagerly and apprehensively from the sidelines, concussed repeatedly by the elaborate percussion setting the rhythm for the ceremony. Viewer beware, this very extended scene is loud, abrasive, and hypnotizing, a well produced version of a late Maya Deren documentary.


I wonder if Gatlif made this scene so uncomfortable for the modern western audience just to confront our aesthetic biases. If so, it works. Zano and Naima seem to eventually accept the experience, but we are only left to consider their possible reactions to it. Throughout much of the film, Zano and Naima seem poised to leave one another. As they shed their urban context, they can find little in each other that serves as common ground. Perhaps, Gatlif uses this final scene as a question mark. Since cities have not done the job at homogenizing racial heritage, will urban Europe have to turn to the traditions of their fathers for any sense of continuity?