Review: Pom Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold

Reviews

Sisters In Law

Pleasant doc captures progressivism in a Cameroon court

By PETER KEOUGH | May 3, 2006

3.0 Stars

Genocide, famine, injustice — that’s what we’ve come to expect from documentaries about Africa. Not so with this skilled, moving, and funny look at two woman judges pushing a progressive agenda in a Cameroon courthouse. Those annoyed by red tape and stirred by Judge Judy will appreciate Vera Ngassa and Beatrice Ntuba, who shoot down the patriarchal and other nonsense of those brought before them with common sense and good humor. The cases, presented in an intimate cinéma-vérité, include one little girl beaten by an aunt, another molested by a neighbor, and a battered wife bringing charges against her abusive husband. This last proved the first successful prosecution of a domestic-violence case in Cameroon in 17 years. Nonetheless, I suspect that these crusaders still have a lot of work cut out for them. But after director Kim Longinotto’s bleaker films on women’s rights, The Day I Will Never Forget and Divorce Iranian Style, I can’t begrudge her a little optimism.

Topics: Reviews , Entertainment, Movies, Crime, More

| More

Most Popular

The Current Issue

Table of Contents

Cover Archive

Masthead | Authors | Contact us

Blogs

See this film: Ghostbusters @ the Coolidge
Outside The Frame | October 21, 2012 at 12:00 PM

See this film: The Phantom of the Opera @ the Somerville Theatre
October 20, 2012 at 5:00 PM

[cmj2k12] Tomorrow in Brooklyn: the Phoenix/WFNX CMJ show
On The Download | October 20, 2012 at 12:01 PM

Free Fun Shit: Oct 19-25: Free hot dogs, WFNX presents Gentlemen Hall + Casey Desmond, Dance Party Massacre Zombie fashion show, Heads of the Charles, street theater fest + more
Phlog | October 19, 2012 at 5:01 PM

Q&A #8: Mayoral Finalists
Talking Politics | October 19, 2012 at 4:57 PM

ARTICLES BY PETER KEOUGH

REVIEW: WUTHERING HEIGHTS [2012] | October 19, 2012
Merchant-Ivory this is not. Nor is it any Emily Brontë we've seen before.

INTERVIEW: ANDREA ARNOLD'S ROMANTIC REALISM | October 18, 2012
People in love do crazy things, especially in Andrea Arnold's films. So adapting Emily Brontë's masterpiece of pathological love, Wuthering Heights , came naturally.

REVIEW: SISTER | October 18, 2012
Increasingly popular among American independent filmmakers, the school of miserabilism — starkly dramatizing the poor, wretched, and unjustly deprived — has thrived in Europe.

REVIEW: GIRL MODEL | October 10, 2012
As seen in David Redmon and Ashley Sabin's somber, sometimes poetic, Fred Wiseman-like documentary, the international model trade ranks just above human trafficking in legitimacy.

REVIEW: WAKE IN FRIGHT (1971) | October 10, 2012
Combining elements of Heart of Darkness , After Hours , and Groundhog Day , Ted Kotcheff's brutally brilliant Outback thriller follows the moral degradation, or perhaps redemption, of a snooty schoolteacher (Gary Bond) traveling from the backwater where he's assigned to Sydney for his Christmas vacation.