HUDA’S SALON is from 2021 and it’s the most recent film from Palestinian director Hany Abu-Assad – I previously reviewed his films RANA’S WEDDING (2002), THE COURIER (2012), OMAR (2013) and THE MOUNTAIN BETWEEN US (2017). After that last one, a big English language movie starring Idris Elba and Kate Winslet, he returned home for another one of his thriller/dramas about life in occupied Palestine.
It opens in the titular Bethlehem hair salon, where new mother Reem (Maisa Abd Elhadi, Baghdad Central) is having her hair done by Huda (Manal Awad). I kinda fell for the implication that it would be a conversational, day-in-the-life kind of movie, because there’s an 8-minute-long oner as Huda washes and brushes Reem’s hair and they talk about people these days styling their own hair based on Youtube videos, then about the invasiveness of Facebook, and then how possessive Reem’s husband is but how maybe she’ll open her own salon some day when her daughter’s older. And the shot is still going as Huda pours her a cup of coffee (that’s nice) and puts some drops of something in it (oh, that’s not nice) and gets ready to cut her hair but she passes out and Huda closes the curtains and opens a door into a back room where a dude named Said (Samer Bisharat, OMAR) has been sitting on a bed looking at his phone while he waits. Now he helps carry Reem in, takes her clothes off and poses naked for Polaroids with her. (read the rest of this shit…)
