This last part of the sequence, intercut with flash-forwards to Brahim at school those shots belonging to a sequence that comes shortly after , stresses the mobility of the workers and is accompanied by sounds of their labor, along with seagulls, the wind, and foghorns. As it moves across these spaces, we begin to hear the equally thin and staticky voice of King Mohammed V, who was at the time about to be sent into exile by the French. Her subsequent life in Cairo is shot in the streets of popular neighborhoods as well as in the lush surroundings of an upper-class bey gentleman. These sequences, which have a hue of green and gray and blue, exist in stark contrast to the scenes of the two families. In this sense, then, Smihi straddles a complex line between realism and what we might call a textually complex aesthetic image—one that remains nonetheless tied to the real.
nest...