Female Film Critics 24/375
Empathetic and authentic, Haifaa Al-Mansour’s powerful drama The Perfect Candidate offers a compelling look at what life is like for women in modern-day Saudi Arabia — and how difficult it is for even smart, brave, ambitious and highly skilled women to stand up to the country’s institutionalized gender discrimination. Even when it couldn’t be clearer that their only goal is the betterment of their community’s standard of living.
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More lacerating because her touch is so delicate, Haifaa Al-Mansour, the first woman to make a Saudi Arabian feature with her stunning 2012 debut Wadjda, delivers a razor sharp look at women’s lives in modern Saudi Arabia with her ironically titled The Perfect Candidate.
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In 2012, Haifaa al-Mansour took a rather giant leap for womankind by becoming the first Saudi woman to direct a feature film and the first set in her homeland. Back then, Wadjda focused on a 10-year-old girl and her desire to be allowed to own and ride a bicycle. This time out, The Perfect Candidate, her latest title set in her patriarchy-oppressed homeland pivots on, of all things, something near and dear to Joe Biden’s heart – infrastructure.
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The Perfect Candidate is Saudi filmmaker Haifaa Al-Mansour’s compelling drama about a woman physician’s plight to get the impassable dirt road leading to the local hospital paved so that patients can get to the emergency ward in time for their lives to be saved. Because her appeals to the authorities are consistently denied — or worse yet, ignored — Dr. Maryam Alsafan (Mila Al Zahrani) decides that she will campaign for election to the town council with road repair as the sole issue presented on her platform.
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