Hounds review β grim and quirky Moroccan crime drama
An ex-con and his son spin around Casablanca trying to dispose of a huge corpse in Kamal Lazraqβs good-looking, if uneven, Cannes winner
A winner at last yearβs Cannes, this by turns grim and quirky crime drama, from Kamal Lazraq, is set in Casablanca and lit like a Caravaggio painting. A macho, feckless and sporadically pious Moroccan ex-con (Abdellatif Masstouri) ropes his adult son (Ayoub Elaid) into doing a βsmall jobβ for a dog-obsessed gangster. Over the ensuing 12 hours, father and son spin around town with a problematically XL corpse, encountering a series of volpine/toothless/insidiously sozzled figures, who offer help (of sorts). All creatures great and small are fighting for their lives in this blasted landscape and, though the tension often flags, the actors, many of them non-professional, give consistently good face, especially Masstouri, who resembles a leathery, bushy-haired John Garfield.
In cinemas and on Curzon Home Cinema
Continue reading...Β© Photograph: Collection Christophel/Alamy
Β© Photograph: Collection Christophel/Alamy