“Gonna be lentils and rice after this,” Muna (Ebada Hassan) tells Doe (Safiyya Ingar) in “Brides,” trying to comfort her friend after a pre-flight feast of fries and milkshakes has led to an upset stomach. The two are headed to Turkey from their native England with the eventual goal of reaching Syria, a trip as ill-advised as eating so much greasy food before getting on the plane when the two teens believe the ultimate act of rebellion is to submit themselves to ISIS as wives for those fighting. They never say as much explicitly in Nadia Fall’s provocative debut feature, but part of the film’s electrical charge derives from being well aware of the tragic irony of their belief that they’ll attain agency in a fate where they’ll have none.
Inspired by a real phenomenon (Alba Sonora Clua’s 2021 doc “The Return” offers a solid primer), “Brides” strikes a unique balance when the film strenuously avoids the sensationalism that usually surrounds its subject while at the same time arrives bursting with youthful energy, clearly aimed at young adults in particular. A montage of anti-Muslim sentiment set to M.I.A.’s “Bad Girls” may lack subtlety, but it is effective at getting into the mindset of the two young women who became friends at Downswood Academy, though if they didn’t, it’s unlikely they would’ve found others. They may be close enough now to plot out an escape, but still there are tiny signs that they don’t exactly put one another’s interests ahead of their own that writer Suhayla El-Bushra is savvy to build in, from the film’s opening minutes when Doe has no problem claiming an empty seat on a crowded bus while her friend has to stand.
The two have ample time to realize how they might not be aligned when they end up getting stuck in Turkey, with their host that lured them halfway across the world leaving them at the airport where they expected to be picked up. At this point, you’d hope that they’d have the good sense to turn around, but Fall and El-Bushra show their own smart instincts for drama by declining to make that the driving force of “Brides” as Muna and Doe spend a day waiting for a bus to take them to the border with various locals who may share their faith, but not their sense of rebellion. While the terrorists that Muna and Doe plan to join remain off-screen, the film makes a convincing case why they’re seen as the lesser of two evils by the naive teens when they’ve already been made to feel as if they’re the enemy, either at school where they’re ostracized or at home where their parents are more concerned with keeping their own head above water, either with work or a partner. Though a lack of trust in others has brought them together, it ultimately springs up between Muna and Doe when the path to Syria grows more uncertain.
Fall chops up flashbacks that show what the two are running away from that flit through “Brides” as a parallel experience with mixed results. For instance, Doe has a boyfriend Samir that never feels fully fleshed out due to the slice-and-dice approach and a scattered chronology that led to their departure can be mildly confusing. But being overwhelmed by a flood of memories opens up a sympathy for the characters who are firmly committed to a future they can’t know when the sheer totality of all they’ve already experienced suggests there’s no going back. Hassan and Ingar are engaging leads who radiate a resoluteness at the same time you can see how they’re unsure of themselves and in general, the film has the right amount of punk sneer to it where Muna and Doe aren’t to be judged by their worst impulses, but what they’re pushing back against. At one point, Muna asks “Who gives a shit about two brown girls?” when Doe considers calling the authorities for help, and by the end of “Brides,” the better question becomes who doesn’t.
“Brides” will screen again at the Sundance Film Festival on January 25th at 8:50 pm at the Megaplex Redstone, January 27th at 7 pm at the Broadway Centre Cinemas in Salt Lake City, January 30th at 4 pm at the Holiday Village Cinemas and February 2nd at 9:30 pm at the Megaplex Redstone. It will also be available online from January 30th through February 2nd on the Sundance virtual platform.