REVIEW Deserted

Passion and Desert

Deserted (director Kadri Kõusaar, 2021) is one of those domestic full-length feature fi lms that reached cinema distribution after the war started in Ukraine in February 2022. The fi lm allows the audience to escape to a more beautiful world than today, and at the same time the medium of fi lm makes it possible to forward a wider message, or a nobler objective.

The fi lm, set in the Sinai Desert, is a love story with a political background, in an imperceptibly far and exotic Middle East; where there is tension between Zionists and Islamists, as well as European and Arabic worldviews. The events in the fi lm bring the viewer back to the comparatively “peaceful” prewar era, when European countries were troubled by refugees arriving from Northern Africa. Newsfeeds featuring Yemen, Jordan or Syria. Yet Kõusaar’s fi lm is not political – the PK machine gun and photo camera are but attributes that also bear a symbolic personal meaning while being opposed to each other.

Swedish photographer Ingrid (Frida Westerdahl) is taken hostage by extremist Islamists while photographing daily life in the Middle East. She is made to spend her days in a desert hideaway under the surveillance of good-hearted Ali (Ali Suliman). Having exposed problematic scenes in the

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FRIDA WESTERDAHL ALI SULIMAN FIRAS TAYBEH MAGNUS KREPPER JESSICA GRABOWSKY

A FILM BY KADRI KÕUSAAR DESERTED

PRODUCERS AET LAIGU, CHARLOTTE MOST & MARIA LARSSON GUERPILLON, MERJA RITOLA & ESSI HAUKKAMAA PRESENT WRITER & DIRECTOR KADRI KÕUSAAR, CINEMATOGRAPHER STEN-JOHAN LILL, ESC, EDITOR MENNI RENVALL, SOUND DESIGNER JOONAS JYRÄLÄ, COSTUME DESIGNER ANU GOULD, MAKE-UP ARTISTS FARAH JADAANE & BILL HAZZAM, 3D ARTIST ROBERT LANDES, COMPOSER BJ NILSEN

Deserted By Tõnu Karjatse First published in Eesti Ekspress

logues and the rather schematic relationship of the protagonists; instead of a spectacular, Deserted can be viewed as a chamberlike melodrama, about how a relationship grows, and about self-discovery. And yet, the desert won’t become a separate character with its own laws, even if the motto in the beginning of the fi lm states the opposite. In the fi rst place, the desert serves as a setting – a neutral, barren, and monotonous space that would seemingly provide opportunities for creating something new. The characters of both Ingrid and Ali are quite simple, thus the audience can have more or less a clear idea of their actions, and the storyline follows a predictable chain of events. Naturally, it is unknown what the lovers’ future will be when the brutal Islamists return, but fi nding each other seems to be fate for Ingrid and Ali. In general, the fi lm mainly focuses on Ingrid’s story, and is possibly more relatable for women than for men. In a way, Deserted is a sentimental, soapy fi lm – since it includes intimate ro-

Nordic countries probably won’t perceive the several nuances concerning the Middle Eastern cultural sphere and traditions. Even if Kõusaar gives the viewer hints, the majority of it remains somewhere in the background, similarly to the desert itself. Instead, the viewer is placed in Ingrid’s world – the character played by an extremely fragile Frida Westerdahl. For Ali, a white woman probably means an adventure for him that he can aff ord, despite being married. And yet, the adventure grows much larger than Ali’s patriotic beliefs. Maybe Kadri Kõusaar is attempting to show the invincible power of love, that will help people survive the most impossible situaOn the Big tions? The fi lm director discusses several big themes in Deserted – women’s rights, the inequalty between rich and poor countries, Screen Desert the seemingly endless spiral of violence in the Middle East, and the human suff ering hard to understand in the Western world. All these problems are tackled only on the surface, since the fi lm focuses on solving Ingrid’s problems, and there are more than enough to solve. Kõusaar won’t

world with her camera, the photojournalist’s own world is unexpectedly narrowed down to a prison cell of a few square metres, with a mattress, bedpan, and a tiny window-aperture, where Ingrid can admire the extraordinary desert view. Ingrid’s guard Ali turns out to be more human than expected. Enforced isolation becomes a platform of self-discovery for Ingrid, just as a glimpse of the desert landscape starts to act as a mirror for her soul. Ingrid’s vulnerable fragility brings out a hidden tenderness in Ali, and gang member transforms into a responsible humanist ready to confront injustice. The silent desert with its merciless beauty is the stage that connects Ingrid and Ali, as well what isolates them from the rest of the world. However, the fi gurative splendour of the sand dunes remains in the shadow of the diamance, fi nding each other, and self-discovery through unexpected diffi culties wrapped in exoticism. At the same time, there is also hidden pain, often known by women better than men, as well as the social injustice between genders, deep-rooted through many generations – injustice that arises from a patriarchal religious social order. The fi lm audience in snowbound leave her heroine alone. But the director won’t tell the audience whether the fi lm has a happy ending, or not.

And yet, leaving the romantic adventure aside, there is an unforgettable scene at the beginning, depicting a circumcised girl, eyes fi lled with terror as she seems to ask: what kind of a world is this that I have been born into? EF

The desert functions as the mirror of the soul for the characters. Ali (Ali Suliman) and Ingrid (Frida Westerdahl) find love there, even though it is not meant to last.