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Little Big People
FILM: Ali Zaoua: Prince of the Streets (NR)
DIRECTOR: Nabil Ayouch
STARRING: Mounim Kbab, Mustapha Hansali
WHERE: 8 p.m. Wednesday-Thursday, Dec. 18-19
Zeitgeist Multi-Disciplinary Arts Center, 1724 Oretha Castle Haley Blvd., 525-2767
GRADE: B+
The street kids who rummage through the urban wasteland
of Morocco's Casablanca look wise beyond their years. Or make that just plain
older, for whatever wisdom they've picked up over time, it hasn't helped them
much. They sell individual cigarettes for change, panhandle whenever possible,
fight amongst themselves, and sniff glue from tattered cloths.
All of them, except Ali, who not only dreams of a better place but even seems
to have a plan. But just as his dream is about to come through, his former gang
kills him, and his friends are left stranded. They have two choices: bury and
honor their fallen comrade or surrender to the former gang and its mute leader.
Nabil Ayouch's Ali Zaoua: Prince of the Streets presents a world of
little big people, kids who are going nowhere fast and trying to find some thread
of humanity that can help lift them up from their cycle of poverty. Ali's surviving
pals -- Kweta (Mounim Kbab), Omar (Mustapha Hansali) and Boubker (Hicham Moussoune)
-- decide that a princely burial for their flamboyant friend will give them
something to hang onto. And it's that interplay among the three, each of whom
has his own inner struggles, that makes Prince of the Streets so endearing.
Kbab, Hansali and Moussoune may be pre-teens, but they sure don't act like it.
With every harrowing experience, every introspective conversation and every
choice, they act like people who've been asked to deal with way too much way
too soon.
But through it all, the dreams endure. Ali's was the most magical: he wanted
to be a sailor, and in giving him his proper send-off instead of leaving him
to rot, his comrades in raggy-clothed arms might begin to pursue their own dreams.
Though it gives into more than its fair share of sentimentalism
-- call it Stand by Me in the Ghetto -- Prince of the Streets knows
exactly where its strength lies. Ayouch deftly sets up the kids' mission to
provide their friend a proper burial as its own little microcosmic journey of
self-awareness, but really, the joy of this is watching young actors show just
how relative age can be.
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