Review: What Walaa Wants is the unexpectedly thrilling coming-of-age documentary of the year GlobeArts
, produced by the National Film Board, is the stuff of a high-stakes Hollywood biopic – though it’s doubtful that any filmmaker could ever do her intimate portrait justice, or find a young actress as compelling or fun to watch as the film’s real-life subject.
Time after time, Walaa has been forced to grow up in circumstances far beyond her maturity level, which have put her through the wringer. Her emotional walls are hard to scale, yet Garland manages to find brief moments of vulnerability within her protagonist’s brave facade. While cavalierly smoking shisha with her friends, she confesses that her biggest regret in life was meeting her biological father.
As a young adult, Walaa told news reporters that without her mother, she felt like she didn’t belong to anyone. Belonging to the PSF is a chance to claim some sort of identity, but it also has dangerous ramifications. Unfortunately, Garland’s film is only able to hint at these in a pivotal scene in which Walaa’s relatives chastise her for insulting and hitting a woman in the square as a representative of the PSF. It is a curious plot point that leaves us hanging.
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