"Oliver Laxe leads his audience into a wilderness of non-meaning in this strange and unrewardingly oppressive film that was the joint jury prize winner at Cannes this year and the recipient of all sorts of critical superlatives. For me, Sirat is the most overpraised movie of the year exasperating and bizarre in ways that become less and less interesting and more and more ridiculous as the film wears on."
"There is a moment of tragic horror halfway through the action that is not absorbed or clarified and whose (presumed) emotional and spiritual consequences are not conveyed. It simply looks coercive and even slightly farcical. The later explosions in the desert are, frankly, Pythonesque. And yet, as with Laxe's earlier film Mimosas there are some wonderful visual moments and stylish shots of the Moroccan desert landscape."
"Sirat is the Arabic word for the narrow, perilous path that takes you to paradise, and there is something interestingly ambiguous about the teeming crowds of people we initially see at a rave in the Moroccan desert. It's a bravura setpiece. They look both like Dionysian ravers and lost souls writhing in hell. Two outsiders show up: middle-aged Luis (Lopez) and his young son Esteban (Bruno Nunez Arjona) with their dog Pipa."
Oliver Laxe's Sirat unfolds as a bewildering, unrewardingly oppressive journey that many viewers find overpraised. The story follows middle-aged Luis and his son Esteban as they search for missing teenage Mar amid a vast Moroccan desert rave. The film alternates evocative, stylish desert cinematography and a bravura rave setpiece with moments that feel coercive, farcical, or emotionally unabsorbed, including a midpoint tragic horror whose consequences go unexplored. Later explosions in the desert verge on the Pythonesque. Sergi Lopez supplies veteran ballast, and some performances and visuals remain compelling despite puzzling structural and tonal failures.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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