Hounds
Kamal Lazraq’s Moroccan drama about a father and son involved in petty crime reveals Casablanca in a new light.
The city of Casablanca is the birthplace of the Moroccan writer/director Kamal Lazraq and in Hounds it becomes the setting for his first feature film. The central characters in it are a father and son, Hassan and Issam. These roles are taken by Abdellatif Masstouri and Ayoub Elaid respectively and, like most of the cast, they are non-professionals chosen to portray life in the lower reaches of the city where rival gangs thrive and betting on dog fights is a popular activity. Indeed, that is where the film begins with an impressive opening sequence. A dog belonging to Dib (Abdellah Lebkiri) fails to survive and Dib, outraged, blames the owner of the rival animal and seeks to have revenge on him by taking it out on one of his men who had been involved. The initial strength of Hounds lies in the intensity expressed by Lazraq and by his cameraman Amine Berrada: their approach avoids any detailed shots of the dog fight itself thus avoiding distress to animal lovers but at the same time it captures the full impact of what has happened. This scene is also key to what follows because it causes Dib to hire Hassan, a petty criminal, to kidnap the man he holds responsible and Hassan then insists that his son, Issam, assist him in carrying out the assignment.
Lazraq has spoken of his admiration for the Italian classic Bicycle Thieves and cites it as a reason why he chose to focus on a father/son relationship in Hounds. In keeping with that he quickly sketches in the milieu and establishes the extent to which for the poor survival can mean a choice between underpaid work or turning to crime. Issam’s instincts are for honest work despite the conditions but his father in need of an accomplice for his task enlists his son without explaining exactly what is involved. Had Issam been aware that a kidnapping was at the heart of the matter he might well have resisted and he becomes even more aghast when the victim, having been put in a car boot and driven away, is subsequently found to have suffocated. Issam wants to go to the police and admit to the circumstances of this accidental death but Hassan, realising how serious the penalty could be, overrules him.
What follows renders Hounds something of an oddity. The social detail in these early scene certainly enables the viewer to feel some sympathy for Hassan and Issam even though their actions have led to a man's death. However, the comparison with De Sica’s masterpiece might suggest that this film would at heart be a deeply felt expression of social concern yet what Hounds offers is a story that unfolds within twenty-four hours or so and mainly at night-time as father and son try to get rid of the body but are constantly frustrated in their endeavours. It is in effect a compact thriller narrative of the kind which, rather than echoing neo-realism, is not that far removed from the kind of tales told in American B-movies of the late 1940s and its serious tone is in keeping with that too. However, for a modern-day audience it does make the film feel old-fashioned. The favoured mode of the moment in this sphere is epitomised by Richard Linklater’s playful Hit Man and, while that register would hardly have fitted here, one is aware that the situation in Hounds invites a treatment that acknowledges the element of black comedy within it. However desperate the situation of Hassan and Issam may become, their inability to seem other than amateurish when trying to get rid of the body adds an absurdist touch to their plight. To be fully affective Lazraq’s screenplay would have needed to recognise this and then to let the humour bring out their vulnerability even more. But that opportunity seems not to have been recognised and is bypassed.
At 94 minutes Hounds is not a long film but those B-pictures evoked were even shorter and the last third of Lazraq's film raises questions. Once a fresh plan to drown the body in the sea has gone awry, the main thread of the story broadens out to involve not only Dib’s gang but a rival one led by Jellouta (Mohammed Kharbouchi). While waiting for this development to take over, the film suddenly stresses new concerns on the part of Hassan since he is a Muslim and now takes to heart the fact that respect for the dead means that the corpse should be washed and placed in a shroud. In this context Hassan’s sudden piety could align with the other ironies that suggest underlying comic absurdity, but the film may at this stage be seeking to take Hassan and his beliefs more seriously and late on both father and son wash themselves.
If the exact aims behind the film remain unclear, it certainly ends on the kind of shot that feels apt for the criminal tale that has been unfolding while the non-professional players, especially the two leads, have the kind of local faces that lend the film an extra authenticity. Nevertheless, despite the novelty of the set-up and of the location, I find myself surprised that Hounds should have carried off awards at seven film festivals including Cannes and Brussels. As a calling card for Kamal Lazraq, it is by no means negligible but the film gives the impression of trying to be more than one thing at a time, both a thriller and a social document, without scoring a bullseye in either department.
Original title: Les meutes.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Cast: Ayoub Elaid, Abdellatif Masstouri, Abdellah Lebkiri, Amine Aboudrar, Mohammed Kharbouchi, Abdellah Saleh, Salah Bensalah, Khalid Rhazoui, Adil Solhy, Abdellah Sahim, Mohamed Hmimsa.
Dir Kamal Lazraq, Pro Saïd Hamich Benlarbi, Screenplay Kamal Lazraq, Ph Amine Berrada, Ed Héloise Pelloquet and Stéphane Myczkowski, Music P.R2B, Costumes Bouchra El Ouali.
Barney Production/Mont Fleuri Production/Beluga Tree/Cinémage 17-Curzon.
94 mins. Morocco/France/Belgium/Qatar/Saudi Arabia. 2023. UK Rel: 14 June 2024. Cert. 15.
