Wadjda/Enough Said

As much as I want to write about the bike/barge trip, life just gets in the way.  Other interesting things enter my life that seem to take precedence.  

WADJDA  Seeing this film makes me wish I were a better writer.  I wish I could somehow express how great the movie is and how much more it is than a story of a ten year old Saudi girl who wants to earn money to buy a bicycle so that she can beat her friend Abdullah in a race.  Wadjda and Abdullah are two Saudi children who never acted before this film.  Abdullah stole my heart in every scene.  Just a beautiful child and so obviously smitten with Wadjda.  But I loved the film not only because Wadjda wants a bike and will get into all kinds of commerce to save enough to buy it, but because she is a girl in a society where girls don't ride bikes and she doesn't seem to let it bother her.  The subplots about how girls and women are viewed in the Saudi culture at once angered me and gave me wonder at the ways the women work through the system.  See this film.

Okay, I love James Gandolfini, but that's not the only reason I loved this film.  Enough Said is a romantic comedy about two divorced people and their attempts to connect.  Gandolfini is superb with those soulful eyes that say everything.  Julia Louis-Dreyfus is terrific.  The premise of the film is that people come to new relationships with the history of their previous breakups.  Is the reason they broke up before a show stopper? Or do some characteristics spell doom for some relationships but not for others.  I loved the film.

How lucky is that?  Two GREAT films in two days.  Doesn't get any better.