In Hany Abu-Assad’s pulpy thriller, two Palestinian women are trapped between political enemies that are united in their misogyny.
“Huda’s Salon” opens with an audacious rug-pull. Behind an unassuming storefront in Bethlehem, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, the middle-aged Huda (Manal Awad) attends to a young mother Reem (Maisa Abd Elhadi), as they gab about Facebook, frenemies and Reem’s controlling husband.
Reem suddenly collapses, and event take a shocking turn. Huda has drugged her, and proceeds to strip Reem and stage compromising pictures of her with a man who had been hiding in the back room. When Reem awakens, Huda reveals that she’s an informant for the Israeli Secret Service. Unless Reem wants the pictures to be released, she must become one, too.
This is the first of many twists in Hany Abu-Assad’s pulpy thriller, which cuts between two tinderbox scenarios. As soon as Reem leaves the salon, Huda is captured and interrogated by the other side, Palestinian fighters hunting down the many women Huda has recruited to spy for the Israelis. Reem, realizing that they are on her tail, paces around her tiny apartment, desperately contemplating her options: tell her husband and risk his wrath, or turn to the Israelis.
As convoluted as it gets, “Huda’s Salon” makes a simple and forceful point: Caught between political enemies united in their misogyny, Palestinian women have no way out. Where Abu-Assad falters is in turning Huda into a didactic mouthpiece for the very themes that Reem’s tribulations, filmed up-close with a jerky camera, convey effortlessly.
Pitted against a Palestinian leader, Hasan (Ali Suliman), in an extended interrogation, Huda offers smug, simplistic retorts: “It is easier to oppress a society that’s already repressing itself.”
Awad’s formidable swagger notwithstanding, Huda’s back story as a denigrated divorcée is sketched too thinly for her self-righteousness to be convincing. That she somehow manages to rattle her ruthless interrogator — and contrive a sentimental out for Reem — takes the sting out of the film’s critique.
Huda’s Salon
Rated R for nudity and graphic violence. In Arabic, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 31 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators.
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
