Ireland, which until it became a Celtic tiger and had to import workers, used to have one export: people. Many, including your correspondent's parents, wound up in America. When they returned to Ireland - sometimes only after a brief stay in the US to earn some money - they were known as "Yanks," even if they remained in Ireland for the rest of their lives.
With millions of maghrebins and their descendants in France, Belgium, and elsewhere in Europe, the North African countries of Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia have plenty of cross-Med visitors all year round, but especially in the summer, as families fill up their cars with goodies and hop on car ferries in Marseille and elsewhere for Algiers, Tunis, Oran, and Tangier. As in Souad El Bouhati's latest film, entitled simply Française, some of these families decide to stay "home." But are they simply transplanted immigres, French, or what? And haven't they heard Thomas Wolfe's admonition, "You Can't Go Home Again?"
For Sofia, played by French revelation Hafsia Herzi (La Graine et le Mulet), "home" is France. We see a glimpse of her life in France as an eight year old, and all the elements that cause problems in later life - coldly traditional mother, loving but uncommunicative father, "feminine" but slightly airhead sister - are sketched in the film's first ten minutes. After the family's station wagon heads off for the port in the dead of the morning, the film fades to the teenage Sofia under a bright Moroccan sky.
She's a sort of tomboy helping out on her parents' farm when she's not excelling at school, her favorite shoes are what the Brits call "wellies," and she's desperate to return to France. That's the story.
So if you think that all films by the growing stable of francophone directors of North African origin are coming-of-age, finding-yourself, cultural identity vehicles, and that there is nothing more to be gained by seeing yet another one after L'Esquive or La Graine et le Mulet, then maybe Française is not for you. But if you like to glean cultural tidbits (like the girls-only boarding house for students away from the farm), or if you might enjoy another stunning performance by Cannes winner of the Meilleur espoir féminin in 2008, then I recommend Française.
Hafsia Herzi, in an interview with Frédéric Bouchaud in Cityvox.fr, said that she had found the script Sofia a bit "annoying," but was asked by the director to make her character "touching." Stick with Herzi 'til the film's ending, where I defy any actor to find a wordless depiction of "touching" to top hers.
How does Herzi deal with her cultural identity? "Above all, I am French," she tells Bouchaud. In addition to breaking into the directorial world with a short film in the making, she's been looking at scripts where the characters are called, as she says, "Juliette, Charlotte, and Magalie," all non-beur French names. If any "beurette" can pull off such a crossover, it is this feisty twenty-one year old from Marseille.