Girls of the Sun Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		1.0
Overall		3.0

Girls of the Sun Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman August 8, 2019

Liberté, égalité, fraternité.

That maxim famously became the literal "marching orders" of the French Revolution, and there's kind of an analog of sorts in Girls of the Sun, a film with a fascinating premise but some problems in realization that deals with some real life history of women battling ISIS. The female battalion in this story has its own mantra, which, when translated, comes out as basically, "Women, life, freedom", though it's arguable that "Liberté, égalité, sororité" would have worked just as well. Writer-director Eva Husson based this tale on anecdotes she had been told by various women who actually lived the horror of being captured and used as sex slaves or otherwise sold into bondage, with at least some of them managing to escape and form their own fighting force to let the ISIS warlords know they weren't going to be able to get away with such actions unopposed.

Husson obviously had noble intentions in setting out to depict this story, but I personally have to wonder if she might have been better off having made a documentary, rather than this piece which indulges in at least some “fictionalization”. Perhaps in order to give the audience an easier entrée into proceedings, she utilizes the character of Mathilde (Emmanuelle Bercot), as an “outsider” French journalist who is attempting to cover the story. Except Husson is not “content” to simply document the unabashed and horrifying misery of the Kurdish women at the (figurative and literal) heart of the tale, and decides to also invest Mathilde with some tragic history, not the least of which is a badly disfigured face missing an eye.

As tragic as some of Mathilde’s story is, it probably pales in comparison to that of Bahar (Golshifteh Farahani), one of the women warriors Mathilde meets, and someone who commiserates with Mathilde over the vagaries of fate which has left each of them with personal losses. But it’s here that the film kind of fritters away its main underlying strength, albeit for perhaps understandable reasons. Over and over again, Husson offers flashbacks detailing various injustices, with a series of “unfortunate events” that ultimately seems not just overwhelming, but ultimately unbelievable, despite the fact that Husson insists a lot of what ended up on screen was told to her personally by various people. But to have all (or at least most) of it happen to Bahar, the film almost seems churlish at times, before delivering something akin to a semi- “happily ever after”.

As flashbacks unfold, Bahar is revealed to have been a prosperous career woman and mother whose life is upended when ISIS invades, ultimately taking her and her young son captive. A number of melodramatic incidences accrue, with imprisonment, rape and suicide just a few of them, and with an underlying plot conceit that kind of plays like the flip side of Not Without My Daughter, with Bahar on the hunt for her son, from whom she’s become separated. This, along with Mathilde’s backstory, plays out against a series of incursions involving Bahar and her “troops”, and it’s actually here that the film attains some of the energy and interest that it’s arguably lacking elsewhere.

There are at least some elements in Girls of the Sun which may remind some world cinema enthusiasts of other efforts like Osama, Timbuktu and/or Mustang, with both clashes of culture and gender roles entering the fray (literally, in the case of the female battalion in this film). Girls of the Sun perhaps unavoidably casts ISIS as unrepentant marauders who treat women like chattel, something that of course energizes the subtext of revenge, or at least vengeance, that Bahar and her team experience. But it’s actually in the camaraderie of the women, a “fellow”ship forged of course at least in part by the very carnage inflicted by ISIS, that the film finds its true voice. A little less melodrama and sermonizing (much of it delivered via voiceover by Mathilde) may have helped this film find more of an audience. I’m still hopeful someone makes a documentary about the real life events underpinning this story.

Girls of the Sun Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Girls of the Sun is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Cohen Media Group with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.37:1. Once again the IMDb is lacking much in the way of technical specs, but I found this interview with director of photography Mattias Troelstrup where he references the Arri Alexa Mini and Arri Alexa, and I'm as usual assuming this was finished at a 2K DI. Troelstrup's interview is interesting not just in terms of him disclosing the technologies utilized, but also in terms of the palette, which can feature a lot of beiges, ochres, yellows, and the like, punctuated by rather bright pops of color on things like headscarves (something Troelstrup overtly mentions). Some of the film is rather windswept, or involves clouds of dust after explosions, and fine detail can understandably falter a bit in these moments. That said, detail levels are routinely impressive throughout this presentation, and some of the outdoor vistas are especially remarkable, with excellent depth of field and rather substantial detail levels despite at times being extremely wide shots. There's a bit of murkiness in several dimly lit interior scenes, where shadow definition is minimal and a bit of crush can intrude.

Girls of the Sun Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Girls of the Sun features a nicely immersive DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track, though our specs only allow for one main language, and this track is actually a combo platter of French, Kurdish, Arabic and English. Unfortunately for the hard of hearing, subtitles only translate the French, Arabic and Kurdish aspects of the track, and are not available for the sometimes pretty heavily accented English dialogue. The film's sound design can be occasionally bombastic, including battle moments and a couple of explosions, but a lot of the surround activity is actually courtesy of ostensibly "quieter" ambient environmental sounds. One of the film's least effective elements is a completely overwhelming score by Morgan Kibby, though for better or worse it also resides in the surround channels throughout the presentation. Dialogue is rendered cleanly if (in the case of some of the English) not always perfectly clearly.

Girls of the Sun Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Q & A with Writer-Director Eva Husson at Quad Cinema (1080p; 22:19)


• Girls of the Sun Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 1:50)

Girls of the Sun Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Girls of the Sun features an absolutely commendable, if undeniably troubling, subject matter, one that deserves to be better known than it probably is, at least in the Western world. But the film is often so screed like and over the top with an unrelenting series of horrors for its focal characters that it almost subverts the very points it's obviously trying to make. Performances are quite well wrought, and some of the location work is especially impressive, but Girls of the Sun is unfortunately an example of mission not fully accomplished. Technical merits are solid for those considering a purchase.