7/10
This year's FNC has been rife with annoying technical issues - delayed starts, wrong-language subtitles, and outright missing subtitles. Catimini was a Quebecois film that was missing its English subtitles, though it was a breeze to understand since I have a good handle on Quebecois French. Hold Back was missing its English subtitles and, as it is a Parisienne French film focusing on North African and Algerian characters, the dialects were much tougher to decipher. The plot was easy enough: a young North African woman, Sabrina, intends to marry a black Christian, Dorcy, in modern-day Paris, despite the vociferous objections of her traditional, overprotective brother Slimane. The movie tracks Slimane as he hunts down some of his 40 (yes, 40) brothers, gathering information and opinions and trying to find Dorcy to talk him out of the union, by any means necessary.
Much of the film revolves around Slimane and his brothers' conversations, and judging from the reactions of those around me, most of these were quite funny. I wish I could say for certain if this were so. Regardless, I did enjoy the film (despite the occasionally obnoxiously jittery handheld digital camera work) and am regretful I wasn't able to enjoy all of its subtleties.
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