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review
While there's little of the
sexual titillation hinted at in the title, director Gillies
MacKinnon's '60s-period adaptation of Esther Freud's novel
instead focuses on pilgrimages both personal and spiritual
through the eyes of a young child whose mother has escaped an
unhappy English marriage for adventure and enlightenment in
Marrakesh and Algeria. The soundtrack serves the proceedings
well, balancing period rock pieces with often captivating
samples of North Africa's rich indigenous folk music. Even the
more familiar Western pieces here (Canned Heat's "On the
Road Again," "Here Comes the Sun" by Richie
Havens, Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit" and
"Somebody to Love") find new resonance in this
context, as do less familiar gems such as The Incredible
String Band's "Worlds They Rise and Fall" and
"Road" by Nick Drake. Jil Jilala's "Baba Baba
Mektoubi" and "The Tortoise's Song" by Khalifa
Ould Eide and Dimi mint Abba offer mesmerizing, if very
different, introductions to the musics of North Africa, while
the title-cut collaboration between Kudsi Erguner and members
of the London Pops Orchestra forges a satisfying, albeit
slightly New Age-y, alliance between East and West. --Jerry
McCulley |
