This movie envisages a situation where a working class person from a developed country(France) moves to a developing country(Morocco) for work. There are multiple themes running in this movie that I found interesting. The movie is political correctness in its most rational form.
Kitchen
Edith (the French working class woman) doesn't get her own lunch box and looks for Cafeteria in her Moroccan factory(which of course doesn't have one). She loves cooking and says it relaxes her. Here cooking has become a leisurely enjoyable activity for even the working class women of developed countries. The routine cooking has been left to the service industry. In a way, even a working class person generates the jobs in a developed world.
Islam
Islamic fundamentalists are viewed as a regressive force. The example of this regressiveness is shown through their charity work. Charity is a means to spread their regressive outlook. So relatable.
The menfolk
An educated Moroccan is helpful and civil to Edith. However, he thrashes a poor boy, who was helping her, thinking that the boy was going to rob her. He even cautions her to be careful with the strangers. The educated Moroccan basically demonstrates the stereotypical class feelings within the country, however, the person who robs her later does come from the country's dark underbelly. Then there was a male who offered her a strawberry picking job at the expense of his own countrywoman. That might show some third world men's unhealthy obsession with the first world women in their preference and treatment.
The womenfolk
The good women are the ones who don't wear burkha, be it Mina, her landlady, or Karima, her best friend in the factory. Mina is a divorcee who lives her life on her own terms. She brings up her son in liberal values as he is cool with her single lifestyle and casual dating. The villain, sort of, Najat, a woman in burkha. Najat, of course, has a backstory. Her fiance had moved to France and instead of sending for her, married the local woman. Now she's bitter about life in general and the foreigner in particular. Here we see the alienation felt by the section of the population where one section enjoys the fruits of liberalism but doesn't carry the remaining along with them. Even though her own culture is suppressive of her free movement, her bitterness is towards the people who are free but don't take the responsibility of freeing others. Further, we see how this bitterness further degenerates into inhumanity. When Edith files a complaint about her incompetence, she takes the revenge not just on Edith but also on hapless Karima.
The gap
After failing to be a working-class woman in Morocco, Edith goes back to France. Her friends in France had cautioned her that her severance package was far better than whatever she gets in Morocco as a salary in redeployment and also about the pitiable working conditions. Both turned out to be true. But she sells her home in France and goes back to Morocco to start a restaurant along with Mina. So, even though she's a working-class woman in France, her social capital is such that she could become a bourgeois in Morocco.
Kitchen
Edith (the French working class woman) doesn't get her own lunch box and looks for Cafeteria in her Moroccan factory(which of course doesn't have one). She loves cooking and says it relaxes her. Here cooking has become a leisurely enjoyable activity for even the working class women of developed countries. The routine cooking has been left to the service industry. In a way, even a working class person generates the jobs in a developed world.
Islam
Islamic fundamentalists are viewed as a regressive force. The example of this regressiveness is shown through their charity work. Charity is a means to spread their regressive outlook. So relatable.
The menfolk
An educated Moroccan is helpful and civil to Edith. However, he thrashes a poor boy, who was helping her, thinking that the boy was going to rob her. He even cautions her to be careful with the strangers. The educated Moroccan basically demonstrates the stereotypical class feelings within the country, however, the person who robs her later does come from the country's dark underbelly. Then there was a male who offered her a strawberry picking job at the expense of his own countrywoman. That might show some third world men's unhealthy obsession with the first world women in their preference and treatment.
The womenfolk
The good women are the ones who don't wear burkha, be it Mina, her landlady, or Karima, her best friend in the factory. Mina is a divorcee who lives her life on her own terms. She brings up her son in liberal values as he is cool with her single lifestyle and casual dating. The villain, sort of, Najat, a woman in burkha. Najat, of course, has a backstory. Her fiance had moved to France and instead of sending for her, married the local woman. Now she's bitter about life in general and the foreigner in particular. Here we see the alienation felt by the section of the population where one section enjoys the fruits of liberalism but doesn't carry the remaining along with them. Even though her own culture is suppressive of her free movement, her bitterness is towards the people who are free but don't take the responsibility of freeing others. Further, we see how this bitterness further degenerates into inhumanity. When Edith files a complaint about her incompetence, she takes the revenge not just on Edith but also on hapless Karima.
The gap
After failing to be a working-class woman in Morocco, Edith goes back to France. Her friends in France had cautioned her that her severance package was far better than whatever she gets in Morocco as a salary in redeployment and also about the pitiable working conditions. Both turned out to be true. But she sells her home in France and goes back to Morocco to start a restaurant along with Mina. So, even though she's a working-class woman in France, her social capital is such that she could become a bourgeois in Morocco.
