Orian Yani Barki and Meriem Bennani have charmed viewers online, and at highbrow institutions from the Smithsonian to the Museum of Modern Art, with their quirky, contemplative pandemic-era short 2 Lizards.
In the series of charming vignettes artfully mixing 3D animation with documentary audio, the filmmakers and artists voice two anthropomorphic lizards drily sharing their experiences getting through the COVID-19 lockdown in New York City.
Now, the pair have scaled up the short’s singular visual style in Bouchra, a poignant, multi-lingual post-coming out story drawing heavily on Bennani’s own life. Movingly human, the film is likewise set in a world of anthropomorphic animals, presented in moody 3D animation created with animation producer Jason Coombs, and combined with live-action backgrounds by cinematographer and co-production designer John Michael Boling.
The team crafts compelling visuals around a modest plot, and actual phone calls and conversations between Bennani, a Moroccan living in New York, and her mother back in Casablanca. (The film is mostly in French, with some English and Arabic.)
Bennani voices Bouchra, a Moroccan jackal in NYC, trying to get over her ever-present ex Nikki (Ariana Faye Allensworth), while struggling to finish the script and storyboards for her next film. Bouchra’s film, about a complicated mother-daughter relationship that bears significant resemblances to her relationship with her own mother, Aicha (Yto Barrada), is intended — like the film Bouchra — as fiction based on real life.
Bouchra might insist during one phone call to Aicha that the mother character in her film is not really her, but the filmmaker quickly betrays her true intentions. Ostensibly asking Aicha for a parent’s perspective on issues raised in the film, Bouchra broaches the subject of why both her mom and dad reacted so poorly when Bouchra came out to them in a letter.
Though mother and daughter are close, and speak on the phone constantly, it turns out they haven’t discussed this painful topic in the nine years since Bouchra mailed that letter. Still, the hurt on both sides sounds raw, especially when Aicha explains that one reason she was so upset about Bouchra coming out is that she then thought “never, never, never will my daughter be able to live here.”
But Bouchra does visit Morocco, making a trip to Casablanca where mother and daughter attempt to bridge their distance, physical and emotional, through honest conversation. And the film doesn’t rely solely on documentary audio. Just as in 2 Lizards, Barki and Bennani show a knack for capturing the cadence and specificity of intimate conversations between a mother and daughter, or friends and lovers.
Banter between Bouchra and her straight-talking bestie lizard Yani (Barki) recalls the funniest bits in 2 Lizards. A bar rendezvous with ex Nikki bristles with nerves and sexual tension, jumping naturally from Nikki dangling prospects of a new job for Bouchra, to the two rehashing old arguments, before finally hooking up.
Even in this starkly non-human world, the characters’ humanity comes across vividly, in their laughter, and their dancing, whether they’re unloading their feelings or avoiding them. Surprisingly, removing the human element also doesn’t diminish the erotic charge of the film’s pair of spicy lesbian love scenes.
Beyond those, the movie generates only subtle action and suspense, save for the low-key intrigue of Bouchra attempting to get her hands on the infamous coming-out letter while staying at her parents’ house.
It’s no wonder why her mind and this movie keep returning to that letter. Bouchra’s stuck on her ex, stuck in her creative process, and stuck in that pivotal moment in her life when coming out was the impetus for her parents’ indelible response and a painful rift she can’t explain.
It’s taken years for Bouchra to get up the courage to confront the past and what scared her, left her feeling broken. However many years have passed since Bennani experienced these events in real life, that’s the time it took, apparently, to cultivate this ultimate expression of deeply felt meta cinema and the enduring message that empathy is universal.
Bouchra (★★★★☆) is not rated and playing in Washington, D.C. on Friday, June 26, at Suns Cinema, 3107 Mt. Pleasant St NW. Visitwww.sunscinema.com.
2 Lizards is on view through August 23 in the exhibition Here: Pride and Belonging in African Art at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art, 950 Independence Ave SW. Visithttps://africa.si.edu.
Swerving down a lane usually reserved for Bruce LaBruce, queer filmmaking duo altSHIFT (Ed Aldridge & Sam Lidbetter) dance between arthouse, grind house, and gay bathhouse in the sex-positive but still stiff erotic slasher Blowie.
Adult film actor Bishop Black, muse of LaBruce’s 2024 satirical horror The Visitor, features alongside fellow gay and alt-porn stars Gabriel Cross, Kayden Gray, Leander, Clark Lewis, and Kali Suhdra as a crew of sex workers-cum-content creators assembled for an ill-fated weekend in the country.
Shooting at a luxurious mansion on a remote Welsh estate, the performers, playing mock versions of themselves, get off to a sticky start. An accidental death on-set, during a scene of extreme BDSM, prompts a conspiracy to cover up the fatal mishap. Yet, despite the concerted deception, a masked killer emerges to seek deadly revenge.
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