Set in two very different locations, “Moon,” the elliptical second feature from Iraqi-born Austrian filmmaker Kurdwin Ayub (“Sun”), is about a mixed martial arts fighter who has reached the end of her competitive career. Faced with a lack of opportunities in her small Austrian town, she takes a temporary job training the daughters of a super-rich but shady Jordanian family. While the many ellipses may annoy the more narrative-oriented viewer, others will be delighted by the mood Ayub creates and the way she plays with audience expectations. The film received a special jury prize in the Locarno competition as well as praise from independent film critics, and is likely to be in demand at other festivals.
After being badly beaten and defeated in her last fight in the MMA cage, Sarah (Florentina Holzinger) falls into a depression. She used to live for training and competition, but now she finds it difficult to plan her next step.
Sarah starts teaching classes at a local gym. Unfortunately, her program is a bit too tough for the amateurs, whose only goal is to look cool in boxing gloves. Her middle-class older sister Bea (Tanya Ivankovic), a young mother, urges her to come up with a business plan. Instead, Sarah jumps at a job offer from slick Arab businessman Abdul (Omar Almajali), which takes her away from her current stress and into the patriarchal sphere of the Middle East’s super-rich: a place with its own problems, especially for young, unmarried women.
It soon becomes clear that Sarah has not done enough research about the country, its customs and the family she works for. When she drives each day to a large but remote villa on the outskirts of Amman, she finds the three Al Farahadi sisters she was supposed to be training strangely listless. Nour (Andria Tayeh), Shaima (Nagham Abu Baker) and Fatima (Celina Antwan) only leave home for trips to the mall, which they make accompanied by a bodyguard. And they don’t even have Wi-Fi. They are home-schooled, cared for by maids and under almost constant surveillance. Apart from putting on makeup, watching soap operas or praying, they have little to do.
As Sarah begins to ask questions – of the girls themselves and of the bar staff at their luxury hotel – the inexplicable little brutalities she puzzles over develop into something more tragic.
Some parts of the film feel a little choppy, particularly the fact that Sarah keeps wandering upstairs to the locked part of the villa despite the consternation this causes and the threatening looks she receives from the Al Farahadi factotum (Amar Odeh). However, the relationship between the sisters and their interactions with Sarah feel spot on. The film’s only humorous moment is when the makeup-crazed Fatima tries to use Sarah like a living doll.
Cages, wherever they are, form the underlying theme of Ayub’s screenplay. She explores the physical and metaphorical cages that a person wishes to leave and those that he wishes to return to.
In the role of the physically strong but not particularly empathetic Sarah, film debutante Holzinger (known for her choreography and performance art) perfectly embodies a foreigner who is overwhelmed. The Jordanian cast is heartbreaking. The naturalistic camerawork by cinematographer Klemens Hufnagl (who shot Sudabeh Mortezai’s “Joy” and “Europa”) focuses on Sarah and contrasts the visual differences between Austria and Jordan.
