The title ‘Everybody Loves Touda’ poses a kind of challenge to the viewers. If everyone loves Touda, don’t you dare? The frank musical drama by Moroccan director Nabil Ayouch leaves little room for differing opinions. From the first gilded frame to the last, the film is in love with its eponymous heroine, a fiery small-town singer who aspires to the status of ‘Sheikhat’ – a revered class of divas versed in the poetic traditions of historical Aita music. As scene after scene is crafted to emphasize Touda’s strong character and profound talent, it’s just as well that star Nisrin Erradi is sufficiently magnetic not to collapse under the weight of the film’s dedication to her.
As a dramatic construct, however, Touda is more fantastical than intrinsically fascinating, characterized mainly by single-minded ambition and brilliant determination to keep the show going. Ayouch’s script, co-written with his wife and fellow filmmaker Maryam Touzani (“The Blue Caftan”), showcases these virtues through a somewhat one-dimensional story of challenge, triumph, setback and renewal, with patriarchy as her colossal opponent. in all respects. contexts. But the film does not show us Touda’s soul in its chaotic, erratic whole – her life as a single mother in particular is rather sketchily drawn – and remains most fixated on her in the performance mode, where she is completely in her power.
When Touda sings, so does the film. Ayouch’s previous film, the hip-hop-infused social drama “Casablanca Beats,” made clear his rather sentimental affinity for songcraft as a means of character expression. Working with a very different strand of Morocco’s rich musical tapestry, he brings that same sensitivity to ‘Touda’, crafting a series of electrifying song and dance sequences that allow his heroine’s inner torment and outward force of personality to reveal themselves simultaneously. Through her own singing with considerable power and emotional abandon, Erradi (a standout in Touzani’s 2019 film ‘Adam’) conjures enough charisma on stage that we share Touda’s rock-solid belief in her own star quality.
At the beginning of the story, that’s pretty much all she has. Touda believes she is a performer, but to the male gamblers in the bars and nightclubs where she performs, she is at best a showgirl, at worst a body for their use and abuse. The opening scene makes this point bluntly, as a performance in a remote, rural location turns sour: after her performance, she is chased into the darkness by a group of drunken partygoers, who brutally rape her. Touda is used to callous treatment from men. Her young deaf-mute son Yassine (Joud Chamihy) is the product of a toxic relationship; his father has long since separated, while her conservative brother views her with spitting contempt as a loose woman.
Uneducated and illiterate, Touda has limited ability to make her own way in the world, making her vocal talent not just a gift but a lifeline. Her distant dream is to escape her filthy backwater and head to the bright lights of Casablanca, where she can make a name for herself as a sheikhat of the highest order and earn enough money to send Yassine to a special needs school. (The boy’s disability feels more like a sharp irony in light of his mother’s musicality than a fully articulated plot point.) But that’s a high ladder to climb, so she grins and endures the filthy performances that she can get, and accepts the cash tips that are rudely tucked away. in her cleavage – a performance environment that stands in stark contrast to the elevated spirituality of the folk music she plays.
When she finally decides to go to Casablanca on her own, a small handful of willing elders help her: not just her unusually permissive parents, who agree to care for Yassine while she finds her feet, but a twinkling-eyed veteran. violinist (El Moustafa Boutankite) who, struck by her talent, becomes her mentor in the art of Aita. So when “Everybody Loves Touda” admits that there can be no progress in this world without the help of any man, it at least suggests that good people who are lost can be found.
The film’s momentum strangely stalls once the heroine reaches the city, while outsiders may discover that the Aita tradition is more mythologized than clearly explained. Once again it is Erradi’s tireless performance and the dazzling energy of the musical staging that come to our rescue. Virginie Surdej’s lithe camera picks up the gold and ruby tones of Touda’s stage wardrobe and glides and weaves around her like a fully seduced audience member, culminating in a sweeping, nearly twenty-minute long sequence shot that follows our heroine’s climactic performance at a high-rise, high-rolling location in Casablanca – an apparent make-or-break moment that doesn’t quite go to plan. In this scene, Touda’s dreams are simultaneously diffused and crystallized for her, even if viewers may not fully share in the poignancy of the moment: like her barking audience, we just want the music to keep playing.
