“Brides”

Director Nadia Fall’s “Brides” offers an earnest but somewhat muddled exploration of teenage friendship and identity as it occasionally struggles to find the right balance in its weighty themes.

The film follows two young women, Doe (Ebada Hassan) and Muna (Safiyya Ingar), as they run away from their troubled lives in the U.K. with a misguided plan to travel to Syria. The plot has a lot of potential, especially with its exploration of the deep-seated desire for freedom, belonging, and a break from the weight of societal expectations. Disappointingly, the execution feels a bit rambling and slow.

Hassan and Ingar work so well together, bringing the raw, youthful energy of their respective characters to life. They capture the complexity of teenage girlhood with a relatable realism, from feelings of hope, confusion, and defiance. The friendship between these two young women is at the heart of the film, the story portrays that adolescent yearning to escape from problems that may be minor, but seem major at that age.

Fall (working from a script written by Suhayla El-Bushra) does her best to tackle heavy sociopolitical themes like marginalization, identity, and faith while maintaining the tone of a breezy coming-of-age story. It feels like the film is juggling too many complex ideas without fully unpacking them. The pacing slows as the narrative stretches to fill the runtime, and Fall seems more focused on atmosphere than actually pushing the plot forward or giving the themes the focus they deserve. The broader political context simply gets lost.

While the fragility of teenage autonomy, the tensions between identity and society, and the disillusionment that comes with youthful ideals are all at play, it is not easy to pinpoint exactly what the film is trying to say because its ideas are so scattered. Overall, I appreciate what “Brides” is trying to do, and it certainly has a lot of heart.

By: Louisa Moore