“It’s simpler to get away with killing a lady. Sadly, society doesn’t care as a lot when a lady dies.”
That’s the fact of life in Saudi Arabia, stated writer-director Haifaa Al-Mansour on the post-screening Q&A of her new movie “Unidentified.” The movie, which premiered at Toronto Worldwide Movie Competition, opens with a truck dashing off after having deposited the physique of a teenage lady wearing a college uniform on an remoted desert peak.
The peach-tinted coloring of the sand fills the body with quiet solemnity. Visually, Al-Mansour’s strategy is middle-of-the-road: it will get the job achieved with out aptitude. The pacing feels proper from the start: because the story unravels, the plot factors neither dawdle nor lurch too shortly ahead.
Al-Mansour — most likely probably the most well-known and one of many first ladies filmmakers in Saudi Arabia —returns with the ultimate movie in her trilogy that includes protagonists all with the surname Al Safan, every possessing an unshakeable will to say her rights as a lady in a society the place doing so is usually harmful.
Within the first characteristic of the trio, “Wadjda” (2013), a lady fights for the best to trip a bicycle, launched 5 years earlier than ladies gained the best to drive vehicles in Saudi Arabia. In “The Excellent Candidate” (2019), a younger girl (Mila Al-Zahrani) runs for municipal workplace, one thing ladies in Saudi Arabia first gained the best to do, together with voting, simply 4 years previous to its launch. And in “Unidentified,” a lately divorced younger girl (once more Mila Al-Zahrani) strikes to the town to dwell alone and work as a file clerk at a police station when the homicide of a teenage Jane Doe compels her to unravel the case. (The Saudi Private Standing Legislation was enacted in 2022, increasing authorized pathways for girls to provoke divorce.)
In every of those movies, the subtext is at all times to showcase the humanity and braveness of ladies in Saudi Arabia, to place a face on the real-life reforms and make them appear much less just like the exception and extra just like the rule. And Al-Mansour, with an unique script co-written together with her husband Brad Niemann, properly is aware of that creating sophisticated characters compelled to navigate tough conditions is extra compelling than a heavy-handed sermon to a largely Western viewers whose understanding of the Saudi cultural context hardly ever extends past honor killings and the deserves of the hijab. That’s to say, what Westerners find out about Saudi is usually skewed or incomplete. Because the final movie in Al-Mansour’s trilogy, “Unidentified” turns up the warmth, making a determined flip into style filmmaking — the homicide thriller — the place there’s room (lastly) for Saudi ladies to be villainous.
Mila Al-Zahrani, because the lead character Noelle, ably delivers a deeply grounded efficiency, embodying her steely will and relentless pursuit of the lady’s killer, paired together with her ever-present trendy black leather-based bag. Spurred on by her obsession with the movies of an influencer who combines make-up tutorials with true crime distillations, she makes use of gender roles to her benefit, getting nearer to the ladies within the sufferer’s orbit than any policeman might on this observant Muslim nation.
Nonetheless, the stakes might’ve been amplified: each time Noelle disobeys the orders of her father-like police sergeant, Majid (Shafi Al-Harthi, who additionally appeared in “Wadjda”), she receives little blowback. As she will get very near fixing the case, past the refined eerie noise in Noelle’s condominium on the highest flooring of her constructing, intimidation by the killer surfaces too late within the story, muting the viewer’s sense of her being in peril. There’s a massive twist on the finish, that one doesn’t see coming, which impresses. The shock is intelligent, however undercuts its emotional affect by arriving with out adequate setup.
If the one approach this movie distinguishes itself is in its skill to humanize and complicate flat depictions and erasure of Saudi ladies, that’s no small feat. Many various kinds of ladies encompass Noelle as she makes an attempt to establish the Jane Doe: rebellious youngsters, college principals, widows who worth custom, entrepreneurs, a police officer at her station, even the medical coroner who lets her examine the physique for clues. That sort of intentionality across the skill of fictional narratives to vary concrete realities — the flexibility to visually think about change — creates a dwelling, respiration empathy “machine,” to borrow Roger Ebert’s phrase. Al-Mansour not solely reminds us that motion pictures are purported to generate empathy, she reveals us exactly how.
“As ladies from the Center East, we are sometimes portrayed as victims with no company. That’s not the complete image. Arab ladies have sass, hustle, and complexity,” continued Al-Mansour on the post-screening Q&A. “Life within the Center East could be harsh and demoralizing, and ladies are part of that actuality too. However we’re not at all times harmless angels. We don’t at all times have to be the ethical spine of a society; we could be flawed, conflicted, and problematic.”
In “Unidentified,” ladies are good, ladies are dangerous, and ladies are all the things in between. In a society the place a lady’s loss of life can simply go unnoticed, this movie makes certain the viewers pays consideration.
Grade: B+
“Unidentified” premiered on the 2025 Toronto Worldwide Movie Competition. Sony Footage Classics will launch it at a later date.
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