Hideous Kinky Review
by Susan Granger (Ssg722 AT aol DOT com)May 6th, 1999
http://www.speakers-podium.com/susangranger.
Susan Granger's review of "HIDEOUS KINKY" (Stratosphere Entertainment)
For her follow-up film to "Titanic," Kate Winslet has chosen a decidedly un-glamorous role in this modest British film, based on Esther Freud semi-autobiographical novel about her own exotic childhood experiences. Winslet plays a restless, penniless single mother from London who takes her two bewildered young daughters - a skeptical eight year-old and an enthusiastic six year-old - to Marrakech in the early '70s in the wake of her divorce from an unreliable British poet. Playing the precocious older daughter, Bella Riza, is the actress who scores in this film, squirming over her mother's selfish irresponsibility and shallow, bohemian pretentions as the mother-daughter tension is sharply observed. Winslet's romance with an acrobat/hustler (Said Taghmaoui, the French-Moroccan actor from "La Haine") doesn't contribute much to the episodic story - and the bizarre, unappealing title is derived from a funny-sounding word game devised by the sisters whose fondest wish is to be "normal." Screenwriter Billy MacKinnon and his brother, director Gillies MacKinnon ("The Playboys"), have created a hybrid: part travelogue/part nostalgic quest for metaphysical
salvation. Unfortunately, the characters - and John de Borman, the cinematographer - spend too much time wandering aimlessly in the sun, indulging in the pungent flavors of the time and place. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, "Hideous Kinky" is a pretty but parched 5 as it slowly labors to re-capture the soul-searching hippie spirit.
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