A Regular Woman aka Nur Eine Frau, written by Florian Oeller, based on the book by Matthias Deis and Jo Goll - Nine out of 10

A Regular Woman aka Nur Eine Frau, written by Florian Oeller, based on the book by Matthias Deis and Jo Goll

Nine out of 10

This motion picture is so much more compelling when we learn that this is based on real events and furthermore, that is the fate shared by multitudes of women in the world…Islamic and wherever they manage to get their murderous ‘brothers and fathers’ all male anyway to commit what they call ‘Honor Killings’

Zagros is the name of another cinematic achievement that deals with the same tragedy, with different names and coordinates, but leading to the same abject, inhuman revenge - http://realini.blogspot.com/2019/04/zagros-written-by-sahim-omar-kalifa-and.html

A Regular Woman is the type of rewarding, creative, relevant motion picture that does not get, alas, a wide distribution and therefore you only have the chance to find it, if lucky, streaming on Cinemax – as happened to this fortunate cinephile, for it surely does not figure in the rather short on value Netflix list – checking on what classics from decades ago they have, the undersigned was extremely disappointed for they seem to have…nothing, or very close to zero.

The tragedy of Aynur could not be more compelling and we know right there, from the opening scenes that she will be dead in a less than one hour and half, in screen time, since this is how long the film is, because she lies there, shot dead in a German street and then we learn the narrative, what led to this catastrophe and we are horrified by what is a case in many thousand, for what happens to the main character of this tragic tale is the paradigm of so many women that are killed by relatives in what they ghastly call:

“Honor Killings!”

Aynur was born a German citizen, but in a family of Turkish descent, her parents had come to work in Deutschland, settled there, but never integrated – we will actually witness quite often feelings of hatred, the next generation does not just choose to live outside the society of the country that had adopted and offered them a decent living, in a civilized, democratic society – though there would be flaws there that justify only in minuscule part whatever the monsters do – but they loath the others…in one scene on a public transport vehicle – cannot remember if it was the subway of a bus – one of the vile brothers of the heroine is speaking to the girl they want to submit and fool into joining this atrocious family and he tells her about the natives that travel with them…’look how disgusting these people are” – words to that effect

The ‘traditionalist’, maybe better said fundamentalist, parents decide that their daughter must follow the rules of Islam and marry the man they choose and given that this spectacular choice lives in Turkey, this is where the woman has to go, obeying the elders and committing to the ‘arranged matrimony’ that will result in absolute Islamic bliss…only it does not get there, because instead of proving the perfect spouse, the Turkish option proves to be an abusive man, and the woman who is now a mother of a boy, returns to Germany, only to find her scolded and even rejected by her own mother first – this is one personage that proves that vileness is not the monopoly of men, for she would play the game of the males of her family and insist on respecting the most medieval and torturing rules of their variant of Islam to the very end

Seeing that for the time she lives under the same roof with the ‘Taliban from Turkey’ – they are not literally members of that other mostly vicious community, it is an attempted figure of speech – she has practically no liberties and she is slowly sufficing – again, just figuratively – the main character decides to try a change and appeals to some German authorities that help mothers in difficulty, by providing a temporary home and some other means of support, but only after they inspect the place where they live, to see if the conditions really necessitate change and this is not a fraud of the kind we have often seen here, where claimants of social welfare travel to get it in BMW cars – though not the latest, most luxurious model, still vehicles that prove beyond a doubt that there – mostly – men actually try to get money for the most despicable reasons

Nonetheless, this inspection is a major problem for the woman who knows the barrage of invectives that she would suffer once social workers come to her home, given that she will have problems in communicating her decision to move out, helped by ‘strangers and infidel’ and indeed, her mother is appalled and then the men in the family, because she is slowly breaking the rules of the Koran as they see it…there will be those that insist on the fact that these personages are not representative of the common Muslim man, but there would be others that highlight the fact that bombings, such horrible, disgusting Honor Killings’ are the provision of Muslims, with notable expect pitons that may contradict this theory, such as the mad man from New Zealand and others like him…

When Aynur decides to move to a different place, she is already on the way to trespassing those old, shall we say terrible rules that state that the woman must take the designated husband, and now she has left him – tough she is supposed to allow him to kill her? – and she is leaving her family behind, and there is another precept that she is breaking and when later on she takes her veil off her head, she is in territory where her brothers call her a whore and the insults, as we know from the start, will be transformed into murderous action…

When she finds a partner, he is attacked by the same Fundamentalist Committee and the man, rather cowardly we might say, says this is too much and he cannot take it anymore, though the relationship with the Turkish- German partner had been almost perfect that far…then things precipitate because there is the other accusation, of abandoning her Most righteous, sublime – really? – faith and Muslims simply cannot do that without getting the label of apostasy and then the death sentence…in those circles we have talked about, which have no mercy and are bent on doing what Allah tells them.

Alas, the victim has reported to the police, but they want proof and their word against theirs is not enough, moreover, there would be complications at the trial, perhaps some victory too, for the dead woman from the debut of the movie is dead near the end and we have to see what, if anything happens at the trial, in this very disturbing, truthful film that raises so many questions and might make some viewers intolerant, at least of those talibans…