‘Everybody Loves Touda’ Review: Nabil Ayouch’s Feminist Musical Drama Only Really Sings When Its Leading Lady Does
variety.comGuy Lodge Film Critic The very title of “Everybody Loves Touda” poses a kind of challenge to viewers. If everybody loves Touda, dare you not?
Moroccan director Nabil Ayouch‘s forthright musical drama certainly doesn’t permit much room for dissent. From first gilded frame to last, the film is besotted with its eponymous heroine, a fiery small-town singer aspiring to the status of ‘Sheikhat’ — a revered class of diva versed in the poetic traditions of historical Aita music.
With scene after scene conceived to emphasize Touda’s strength of character and depth of talent, it’s just as well star Nisrin Erradi is sufficiently magnetic not to buckle under the weight of the film’s devotion to her.
As a dramatic construction, however, Touda is more fabulous than she is intrinsically fascinating, characterized predominantly by determined ambition and glittering, show-must-go-on resolve.
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