"Lila Says" by Ziad Doueiri

Exclusive Preview Screening/Panel
Thurs, Jun 23, 7:30 pm
Westside Pavilion Cinemas
10800 Pico Blvd. | map | 310.559.5544
Los Angeles CA 90064. Free parking, 3rd flr.

About the Film

In a Marseilles ghetto, Lila, a gorgeous sixteen-year-old Catholic girl (Vahina Giocante), stops to talk to Chimo, a nineteen-year-old Arab boy (Mohammed Khouas). Lila asks Chimo to look up her skirt -- if he can handle it, and puts into motion a sequence of events that is shockingly raw, sensual, and devastating. Lila's angelic demeanor barely contains the vitality and powerful eroticism that she shares with him and with which she transports the shy and sensitive Chimo from the bleakness of his life.

"Lila" is a coming-of-age tale that focuses on Chimo, a sensitive young man emerging from adolescence in a working class, largely immigrant quarter of Marseilles. Like many sensitive young men, he doesn't spend his whole day sitting around reading poetry - he knocks around town getting into mischief with three pals.

Since all four are Franco-Arabs in the post-Sept. 11, 2001, universe, being hassled by the cops is part of the process as much as getting drunk. So is sticking their noses into the local mosque to check out what the sheikh has to say. None of this business is pursued in any detail. Though they evidently have pious friends, none of Chimo's pals seems to be serious-minded enough to either engage with Islam or reject it.

The travails of the Lebanese civil war provided a context for the family drama-cum-coming-of-age comedy of "West Beyrouth." Similarly, the issues of integration, racism and community that have come to define urban France's immigrant poor are kept in the background here. They provide a scenic setting for Doueri's story, a thing to be engagingly photographed.

The film is more interested in what makes Chimo more redeemable than his pals. On one hand he has a close relationship with his mother (Carmen Lebbos) - who is mourning the loss of her husband (he abandoned her for a French woman) and seems to be on the road to becoming a devout Muslim.

Chimo also stands out because of his talent as a writer, which attracts the attention of his teacher. She encourages Chimo to move to Paris to develop his craft but he's looking for reasons not to go - a not-altogether convincing feint, since Chimo is narrating his story for us.

LILA SAYS is based on a controversial first-person French novel from Chimo's journal of his encounters with Lila. Each time they meet, she tells him increasingly troubling tales of her supposed exploits and violations, inspiring in the uneducated Chimo a previously untapped poetry. With grace and a streetwise wit, he records her story. The film builds relentlessly, breathlessly, until it becomes clear that Lila is perilously close to the edge, where the brutality of the world they inhabit threatens to consume her.

A provocative film - featuring French cinema's most sexually charged bicycle ride since Jules et Jim - as much about tolerance as sexuality, LILA SAYS is a touching, wrenching tale of innocent love sprung from wanton degradation, convincing us that even in the bleakest, most bitter settings, beauty and romance are possible.

Lebanese-born Doueiri studied filmmaking in the United States, and worked as an assistant cameraman on several features directed by Quentin Tarantino. His first feature as a director, “West Beirut” (1998), shared the FIPRESCI International Critics Award at the 1998 Toronto International Film Festival. LILA SAYS is his second feature.

Doueiri’s story of sexual awakening is being released in North American distribution by Samuel Goldwyn Films.