Raja (2003) Reviews

• Touching and intelligent

  mtoumba2006-04-07

  After more then 20 years of continuous work French filmmaker Jacques Doillon still manages to polarize his audience. He is whirling where others rather stay quiet and the spectator either reacts with open indignation or enthusiasm (check the other comments!!!). This is also true for his movie "Raja" that is settled in Morocco. It's the story of a young woman called Raja that works in the garden of a rich Frenchman. The landowner is suffering from his solitude after leaving back a broken marriage in Paris. After spotting the girl working outside he is approaching her, for Raja a chance to escape a life in poverty. Between the two develops a strained relationship in which power, reward, love and hate is negotiated after rules that transport Doillon's astonishing analysis over topics like prostitution and post-colonialism. An incredible wise film, brilliant in acting and precise in dialog. Touching.

• Pascal Greggory leave you wanting more.

  bernice-denison2008-04-20

  I was channel surfing (the whole four on commercial TV) and Raja was on late on SBS. At first I thought I was too tied to read the subtitles and watch the film but something hooked me. Not only was Fredrick an older man but it's the cross cultural thing. Fred was smitten with Raja and he would have taken her away from her abysmal life with her pimp boyfriend Youssef and loved her unconditionally. I didn't feel the movie was too long, if anything I wanted to know more after Fred gave all his money to Youssef to pay for his marriage to Raja. The marriage you know was never going to happen. I had never heard of Pascal Greggory before and I don't know why maybe because he's French? I think he did a fantastic job in the roll of Federick - He leaves me wanting to know more about him and his acting because even without the translation he came across as a brilliant actor.

• good but drawn out

  kurtz-12004-03-30

  I was really in a mood to see a good foreign film ..having recently seen Distant and The Return and having missed Kitchen Stories and Crimson Gold thta were no longer playing at any NYC theaters. So I read a couple of reviews that were generally favorable to this film and decided to see Raja. The fact that I have been to Morocco and Marrakesh specifically also contributed to my interest in this film. While I thought the film had some merit and did give somewhat of a feeling of the plight of the Moroccan underclass I thought that, overall, it was very drawn out and seemed to prolong or unnecessarily stretch out the plot line of the somewhat bizzarre and seemingly impossible relationship between the Frenchman and Raja. I felt that the relationships between his two "servants" who cooked and cleaned and seemed devoted to him was far more believable (my sense was that they were not professional actos which really seemd to work.) His obsession with young girls, in particular Raja , and his boredom with life was clearly manifested yet it was,again in my opinion belabored and took away from the dramatic flow of the film. The ending, in particular, was also somewhat farfetched and seemed to further distract from the main theme of the film

• one of the best films i have ever seen

  gargih2012-11-02

  This film is about language. The way language operates between two people who don't understand the same language but still have the same wants, but are never able to communicate. There are people who translate for both of them, and all the translations are distorted by cultural values or translator's own intentions. I loved the performance of 'Raja', the actress is extremely beautiful. It was very intimately able to communicate the details of lives of a street child, who grew into a street-girl and ended up with a bad and loveless man who only wants to exploit her. It was not about sex, money, or other similar things, but it was how these mere ideas can ruin a love affair. In all it entertained me and broke my heart. It was such a pleasure.

• recommended

  dt19082012-12-16

  Two thousand kilometers from Marrakesh of Morocco to Paris France but two different worlds that will not enable communication and bridging the gap. Sad and though Fred holds some hope, the spectator can not share this hope. Seems authentic, very good performance of the actors, I agree with the person that said that some of the figures do not seem to be actors but act themselves (the house maids). Whatever seems at the beginning to be a perversion, understood later as a desperate struggle for emotional survival and reason for existence. In this sense the swimming pool is a good metaphor. I find this film to be a refined, touchy, moving, beautiful film. One of a kind.