Hideous Kinky MPAA Rating: R Entertainment: +1 1/2 Content: -2

HIDEOUS KINKY tells the story of an English woman and her two daughters who leave London and travel through Morocco in search of high adventure and spiritual enlightenment. The title comes from a childrens game of combining adult words that make no sense when coupled. Julia (Kate Winslet) and her daughters, Bea (Bella Riza) and Lucy (Carrie Mullan), live a meager existence as they travel, waiting all the while for support checks from the girls dad in London. They meet up with a street performer in Marrakech named Bilal (Sad Taghmaoui) who becomes Julias new lover and the girls surrogate father. And finally in Algeria a renowned Sufi holy man helps Julia decide whether she is ready to enter into the blissfully enlightened state offered by the Islamic sect of Sufism. HIDEOUS KINKY will most likely appeal to a narrow arts film audience and we do not expect big box office gains. The racy sounding title is likely to be a challenge for publicists trying to sell this movie to the general public.

Set in 1972, feelings of dissatisfaction with the status quo send Julia on a search to find herself. This search takes her into an emotional religious experience and an irresponsible personal and sexual lifestyle that threatens the welfare of her daughters. She leaves her live-in boyfriend, and the father of her girls, in London and finds a new lover in Morocco who has also abandoned his wife. The immorality of infidelity is brought out twice, once by an elder of Bilal and once by the Sufi master, and family responsibilities are ultimately shown as important. While the underlying religious message is hard to discern, it seems that Christianity is viewed as rigid and harsh and Sufism as more enlightened. Although the language is fairly mild for an R-rated film, the dialogue does contain six obscenities and one regular profanity. Julia is shown once in bed with Bilal where breast nudity is shown and intercourse is implied. With its apparent endorsement of the Islamic faith, along with the obscenities, nudity, and one profanity, HIDEOUS KINKY does not receive our recommendation.

Preview Reviewer: Cliff McNeely
Distributor: Stratosphere Entertainment, 767 Fifth Ave., Suite 4700, New York, NY 10153, (212) 605-1010