Young Ahmed

A teapot-sized tem­pest brewed up on social media when the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val released the offi­cial syn­op­sis for Young Ahmed, the new fea­ture from Croisette main­stays Jean-Pierre and Luc Dar­d­enne. It revealed basic a premise ori­ent­ed around an ado­les­cent Mus­lim fun­da­men­tal­ist on a mis­sion to mur­der his school­teacher, though that was more than enough to set off pre-emp­tive alarm bells.

To an extent, the con­cern was under­stand­able enough: what could two white Bel­gians with no known con­nec­tion to the Islam­ic faith have to say about a reli­gion already freight­ed with con­tro­ver­sy (if not out­right prej­u­dice) in the French-speak­ing world?

Quite a bit, as it turns out, lit­tle of it par­tic­u­lar­ly inflam­ma­to­ry. Though 13-year-old Ahmed (Idir Ben Addi, old enough to shave and young enough that his peach fuzz doesn’t require lath­er­ing) shares an ide­ol­o­gy with the rad­i­cals that West­ern news media just can’t get enough of, the Dar­d­ennes don’t paint with such broad strokes.

One ear­ly scene set dur­ing a meet­ing of the Mus­lim fam­i­lies of Ahmed’s class­mates estab­lish­es in no uncer­tain terms that this pop­u­lace is no mono­lith, with plen­ty of infight­ing between con­ser­v­a­tive and more per­mis­sive fac­tions. Their broad­side tar­gets extrem­ism as a con­cept, and the insid­i­ous man­ner in which it lures the dis­af­fect­ed and impressionable.

If there’s a vil­lain in the mix, it’s the Imam (Oth­mane Moumen) fill­ing Ahmed’s head with hatred for local edu­ca­tor he brands an apos­tate and ​“bitch”. Madame Ines (Miri­am Akhed­diou) has done noth­ing more sac­ri­le­gious than teach­ing Ara­bic through song, but with her Jew­ish boyfriend she’s a per­fect repos­i­to­ry for the more gen­er­alised anger rag­ing in Ahmed’s heart.

His father has been gone a while by the time we join the fam­i­ly, and Ahmed has sub­li­mat­ed the resul­tant hurt into the belief that his mother’s slat­tern­ly dress and taste for alco­hol drove him away. Most trou­bling of all, he idolis­es his cousin, a known ter­ror­ist already mar­tyred in his pur­suit of jihad.

The build­ing blocks of fanati­cism could be eas­i­ly fit­ted to anti-Semit­ic school shoot­ers in the Unit­ed States or xeno­phobes in the Unit­ed King­dom. In part, that applic­a­bil­i­ty for­ti­fies the Dar­d­ennes’ writ­ing by putting it in clean moral terms. On the oth­er hand, that same qual­i­ty reflects a lack of per­spec­tive that con­stant­ly invites com­par­i­son to an alter­nate ver­sion of the film that may have been more sharply honed.

As a rule, I find it more pro­duc­tive to dis­cuss what a film is rather than what it isn’t. Even so, this one is pep­pered with lit­tle moments remind­ing the view­er of a cer­tain remove that a Mus­lim film­mak­er wouldn’t have to con­tend with. The vérité-style cin­e­matog­ra­phy likes to linger on Ahmed as he goes through the mun­dane process of reg­u­lar prayer while in juve­nile deten­tion, peer­ing at his mur­mur­ing lips with a mix­ture of def­er­ence to his devout­ness and fear of the lengths he’ll take it to. The shots aren’t quite voyeuris­tic, just over­ly fas­ci­nat­ed; Ahmed’s dili­gent sharp­en­ing of a tooth­brush for unsavoury pur­pos­es plays the very same way.

The end­ing in par­tic­u­lar suf­fers from this absence of innate under­stand­ing, giv­ing the film­mak­ers an easy way out from the ques­tions of penance and for­give­ness that’s nagged so many of their past char­ac­ters. The Dar­d­ennes have often set­tled on not-know­ing in their work, only here, that accep­tance of uncer­tain­ty plays like a con­ces­sion that they’re in over their heads. Con­sid­er the lean 84-minute run­time, a sign of their inten­tion to pare this sto­ry down to its barest elements.

Instead, speci­fici­ty should be the name of the game with such sub­ject mat­ter, the key fac­tor sep­a­rat­ing this vague para­ble from the hot-but­ton sur­gi­cal dis­sec­tion of inner tur­moil it deserves to be, and billed itself as.