Film Review: Scales

Scales is the directorial debut of Saudi Arabian filmmaker, Shahad Ameen. It’s a fable of sorts, one that revolves around a young girl, Hayat (Basima Hajjar), who lives in a small seaside village where there is a dark ritual. The first born daughters of every family have to be sacrificed to the “sea maidens” that lurk in the waters. Twelve years earlier, Hayat’s father, Muthana (Yagoub Alfarhan), saves his daughter from being taken by the creatures, but has become an outcast as a result. Hayat, having been marked by one of the creatures, resulting in scales on her foot, decides to challenge the traditions of the village.

It’s quite amusing seeing this not too long after watching the most recent Pixar film, Luca, because they both deal in some similar ideas, especially in how they handle their settings, but they take wildly different approaches in filmmaking as well as theming. Ameen knows how to make an impression, from the bleak black-and-white cinematography by João Ribeiro, to the eerie score by Mike and Fabien Kourtzer, the whole team behind this has built an unsettling atmosphere that is really effective, which is more impressive considering this is Ameen’s very first feature length production.

The film is very much an exploration of womanhood, of female agency and autonomy, particularly in the context – and confines – of the desires and superstitions of a patriarchal society. Women in the village are seemingly considered to have no value, with perhaps the sole exception of eventually giving birth to a male. Hayat often tries to prove herself, but is met with scorn, especially by the elders, though she presses on in the hopes that they might be at least a bit more enlightened regarding the nature of the creatures that they fear so much. Her resilience is ultimately her greatest asset.

It’s not necessarily the most extensive exploration of these ideas. The film is fairly short, clocking in at about an hour and fifteen minutes, and that includes the credits, though the pacing does make the experience feel a bit longer than it actually is. Much of that is due to the lack of dialogue. Ameen keeps words to a minimum, instead relying on the power of her images to get her ideas and messaging across, and for the most part, it comes together really well. However, this isn’t an approach that I imagine will connect with everybody, especially because of the pacing.

While Scales did sometimes test my patience, I think there is a lot to really like about this film. I love how it feels like an old fable come to life, like the kind of tale that would be passed around camp fires for generations before it would be written down, and Basima Hajjar carries a lot of the strangeness really well. It’s an effective mood piece that evokes a variety of films from old monster movies to the emotionally driven metaphors of something like Hard To Be A God to the works of Guillermo del Toro. It may definitely be rooted in a specific culture that Shahad Ameen had grown up in, but she manages to tell the story in a way that feels universal, and I’m impressed at what she was able to pull off here.

Scales is now out in select theaters.