The Perfect Candidate | Little White Lies

The Per­fect Candidate

25 Mar 2020 / Released: 27 Mar 2020

A woman with dark hair wearing a patterned top holding a microphone and speaking at a podium with colourful decorations.
A woman with dark hair wearing a patterned top holding a microphone and speaking at a podium with colourful decorations.
4

Anticipation.

Al Mansour’s history-making debut, Wadjda, is a beaut, but a few mis-steps since then.

4

Enjoyment.

The framing of one woman against the world could seem overfamiliar, but is played with brilliant confidence.

4

In Retrospect.

Maryam’s story is one to empathise with, but still precise enough to entirely belong to her.

Haifaa Al Mansour’s lat­est sees female doc­tor chal­lenge Sau­di Ara­bi­an social norms by run­ning for local election.

If you dare to look at any head­lines the morn­ing after an awards cer­e­mo­ny, you will most like­ly encounter a few firsts”. The 2020 Oscars offered a fine exam­ple: Par­a­site was the first South Kore­an film to be nom­i­nat­ed for any­thing – and the first non-Eng­lish lan­guage title to win Best Pic­ture. His­toric wins of this ilk do mat­ter, but head­lines tend to reduce a film or per­son to sim­ple mile­stones that unin­ten­tion­al­ly speak for an entire nation­al­i­ty, reli­gion or gen­der. And it’s all get­ting a lit­tle tiresome.

The top-line ingre­di­ents of Haifaa Al Mansour’s fourth fea­ture, The Per­fect Can­di­date, promise to deliv­er a tired repro­duc­tion of a famil­iar for­mu­la, one that sees a head­strong woman prove just how stub­born and strong she is. Head­lines aside, the fact that the film­mak­er was the first Sau­di woman to ever direct a fea­ture does give this sto­ry an earned confidence.

Fol­low­ing a cou­ple of Eng­lish-lan­guage offer­ings (includ­ing 2017 his­tor­i­cal biopic Mary Shel­ley), Al Man­sour returns to Sau­di Ara­bia and shifts her focus to Maryam, an ambi­tious young doc­tor run­ning in the munic­i­pal elec­tions with the sim­ple goal of repaving a dam­aged road. Maryam’s obsta­cles, which might be quick­ly writ­ten into a head­line as First! Woman! In! Pol­i­tics!” are in fact fourfold.

She isn’t tak­en seri­ous­ly as a polit­i­cal can­di­date because she’s first belit­tled in her role as a doc­tor, sec­ond as the daugh­ter of a wed­ding singer, and third as a woman. What busi­ness does she have ris­ing above her sta­tion, the places she belongs, the jobs she already works so hard at? And she faces so much extra push­back: male patients refuse to be seen by Maryam because of her gen­der; her father doesn’t under­stand why she can’t just go into the fam­i­ly busi­ness; plus she’s forced to cov­er her face entire­ly when record­ing cam­paign videos.

A full, grass­roots polit­i­cal cam­paign is not some­thing that peo­ple like Maryam usu­al­ly do – but Al Man­sour skil­ful­ly con­vinces that there aren’t mil­lions of peo­ple exact­ly like Maryam out there. The strict con­di­tions of her cir­cum­stances are what give her char­ac­ter cred­i­bil­i­ty, while also allow­ing the film to attain a greater lev­el of sen­si­tiv­i­ty beyond just deliv­er­ing yet anoth­er cry for vague female empowerment.

There’s spe­cif­ic insis­tence on the con­straints women face in Sau­di Ara­bia too: gen­dered spaces; manda­to­ry niqabs in pub­lic; and book­end­ing shots of Maryam dri­ving her car alone – some­thing Sau­di women have only been allowed to do since 2018.

Mila Al Zahrani plays Maryam with simul­ta­ne­ous­ly gen­er­ous and wicked deter­mi­na­tion, lis­ten­ing to the peo­ple she meets and search­ing for ways to give them sup­port, while stay­ing true to what she knows she’s worth. Maryam has two sis­ters bol­ster­ing her, with the youngest ask­ing, Is this a women’s rights thing?” This kind of blasé́ humour best encap­su­lates the film’s mood, with the con­vic­tion to deliv­er a fiery mes­sage play­ful­ly wrapped in irony.

The Per­fect Can­di­date is more inter­est­ed in Maryam’s prag­mat­ic thought process­es than the flashy dra­ma of the actu­al vote. The results mat­ter lit­tle, as how­ev­er many his­toric head­lines are made, there is always more work to be done. Al Man­sour knows this – there is sim­ply no time to dwell on the dregs of a click­able news sto­ry. Every woman’s uphill bat­tle will look dif­fer­ent, and here is one fleshed out admirably.

The Per­fect Can­di­date is released dig­i­tal­ly on 27 March. For more info head to mod​ern​films​.com

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