Divines is a french drama that took Houda Benyamina four years to make and would ultimately win him and his cast 14 awards both in the US and Europe. The film stars Oulaya Amara, the director’s little sister, as Dounia along with her best friend Maimouna, played by Deborah Lukumuena. In the beginning, the film uses a Snapchat montage of the girls’ adventure through the streets of Paris as a highlight reel for their friendship. The ingenious actress chemistry to the chaotic midnight antics perfectly set the scene for Dounia and Maimouna’s rebellious yet genuine personalities that mesh well together.
As it becomes clear that Dounia and Maimouna are both victims of the poverty-stricken side of Paris, they are forced to steal from convenience or low-end grocery stores to make ends meet. However, it’s not until Dounia drops out of school is when they realize that they can make much quicker and heavier cash if they work alongside Rebecca, an infamous drug dealer. Divines ultimately follow Dounia as she quickly spirals into an inescapable promise to Rebecca that she can’t get out of. French and Islam influences such as Paris’ poverty and the “jinn” build the film’s theme of how one’s greed can ultimately leave them to lose everything.
According to The Borgen Project, There is a considerable gap between the rich and the poor in France. The bottom 20 percent of the population earn almost five times less than the top 20 percent. This inequality is more obvious in the French city of Paris. Dounia and Maimouna are a part of the unfortunate half of the spectrum. Dounia lives in the “Roma camps” which represents Paris’ shantytowns, but we’re given some clarity of her situation when we see Dounia’s alcoholic mother getting fired from her job again at a sleazy nightclub. Paris shantytowns have been active since the early 2000s, and even now France is suffering from its largest recession since WW2. The 1970s recession after WW2 lost millions of their jobs and stagflation was on the rise, but France and Japan were most affected due to their dependency on oil imports. While France is still trying to steady itself after the 1970s economic hit, coronavirus shutdowns have done greater damage than before. From the latest figures, European economy shrank by a record 3.8 percent in the first quarter of the year.
We see in the film how poverty in Paris has affected the youth. With the lack of job openings after high school, one of Dounia’s exams is to mimic a desk receptionist job. The instability in the Paris job market forces the school curriculum to prepare their students for low-end maintenance jobs in the future. Dounia knows that the conventional 9-5 job won’t save her from becoming another one of the penny-pinching adults that live in Paris, so she intentionally fails and chants, “Money, money, money!” as if to tease the teacher that she will “make more money than she [her teacher] can will ever dream of in her life!”
Dounia doesn’t take the exam seriously due to common knowledge of how successful the drug cartel business is in Paris. There’s a lack of authority for drug-dealers that boastfully surround Paris as seen in this FRANCE 24 segment: Civilians are forced to confront Paris’ epidemic of teenage drug dealers while government officials and politicians stay silent.
With the poverty rates still soaring in Paris, the rate of teenagers that turn to drugs as a source of income is in direct relation. We see how Rebecca, the town’s infamous dealer, has created this empire beneath her and takes advantage of the police’s low efforts to enforce drug laws.
Now, we see how Dounia and Maimouna are affected by the prevalent poverty present in Paris. But why is this story about them? Why does this story have a more powerful message and narrative of the statistic of two poor french schoolgirls who ultimately become drug dealers? Well, that’s because this movie actually have three main characters: the “jinn.”
After rewatching Divines, I still didn’t know why it was called Divine. Either the French to English translation missed a word or the word was hidden in the background, but I couldn’t find a real reason. However, I realized that I didn’t recognize any of the names in the movie, probably because it’s a french film. I wanted to see if there was another reason for these unfamiliar names.
Maimouna, the best friend of the protagonist, translated from Arabic means “Happy, under the divine protection.” This is when I paid more attention to that particular scene where Maimouna references the “jinn.”
Maimouna references the “jinn” frequently throughout the film after Dounia is officially working under Rebecca. There’s a particular scene where Maimouna and Dounia have a heart to heart conversation about their perspectives on god; Maimouna believes that “God has to watch over his children” even when they willingly put themselves in danger for selfish reasons, but Dounia dismisses that god only sees humans as “microbes” from space. This scene made it clear that this movie’s message was intertwined with the teachings of Islam.
Maimouna and her family are devoted followers of Islam. Unlike Maimouna and her family, the film makes it clear that no one else cares enough about god whether it’s in Islam or Christianity. Dounia has even fallen victim to the disconnected attitude when Maimouna’s father questions her on why she stopped showing up to the church.
Maimouna is in her church praying as Dounia waits impatiently for the ceremony to be over. Schoolgirls take off their hijabs as soon as they pass by the school’s superintendent whose guarding the entrance. Dounia even takes advantage of the church as she sells drugs to another client inside it. While god doesn’t seem to be the main focus in any of the characters’ lives except for Maimouna, the“jinn” or satan is the film’s third main character.
“Jinn” is the supernatural in Islam that comes from the Arabic noun “to hide” or “to adapt.” The “jinn” commonly known as “satan” drives evil spirits into people’s lives if they don’t protect themselves with the word of god.
There’s a myth that shooting stars in Morocco mean that devils are being chased away from the heavens. When Dounia and Maimouna are about to fall asleep in Maimouna’s bedroom, they both look up at the sky. Dounia says she’s scared for tomorrow’s mission which is at high stakes for 100,000 dollars. The girls look up at the sky almost for reassurance that tomorrow will be successful.
In the Quran, God says “Indeed We created man from dried clay of black smooth mud. And We created the Jinn before that from the smokeless flame of fire” (Quran 15:26-27). Saheeh Muslim, the prophet, summarizes that “The Angels were created from light and the Jinn from smokeless fire.”
There are two arsons attacks in the movie: both tie back to Dounia’s greed for money and when she succeeds in a two-part scheme to manipulate a sleazy man who is hiding 100,000 dollars. The arson attacks happen right after Dounia achieves high hopes of getting out of her poverty-stricken situation. Fist, she succeeds in gaining the attention of the sleazy man but then finds her accomplice sleeping with her mom. She pulls vengeance on her accomplice by lighting his mother’s car on fire. Second, after Dounia runs away from Rebecca after successfully stealing the 100,000, Rebecca takes Maimouna as ransom. All three have an altercation in a shed that escalates into the shed lighting on fire. Everyone but Maimouna survives when the hut combusts. This 100,000 dollar mission is the first and last opportunity for Dounia to escape out of the “Roma towns” and consequently are the two major signs of evil trickling its way into her life.
According to islamreligion.com, the “Jinn” has “the ability to possess and take over the minds and bodies of other creatures.” Therefore, the “jinn” all along has not been Dounia’s poverty but her greed for money that eventually kills her best friend. Once Dounia started to envy and aspire for Rebecca’s wealthy lifestyle, she dropped out of school and lost important people in her life such as her school friends, mother, dancer love interest, and Maimouna.
When Dounia stopped going to church, the jinn manifested itself into money that eventually lured Dounia into her erratic and chaotic behavior. Maimouna’s warnings of the “jinn” that are the drug dealers or sketchy shoplifting schemes were wrong; money drove the operation.
When Maimouna dies, this is the first time we see Dounia turn to god and plead for his answer. However, it is too late and Dounia must deal with her consequences of letting money take over her life. The end scene shows the past selves of Dounia and Maimouna before they got wrapped up in the money-hungry world, to pay homage to their friendship that was ultimately destroyed because of greed.