MOVIE REVIEWS : ‘TEA’: OUTSIDERS IN MEAN STREETS OF PARIS

Friendship is the core of the new film “Tea in the Harem” (at the Westside Pavilion); poverty, crime and danger the outer husk.

It’s set in lower-class suburban Paris, partly in the Gennevilliers housing project where the young writer-director, Mehdi Charef, spent his teen-age years--living the same experiences that his teen-age protagonist Majdid (Kader Boukhanef) does in the movie: petty theft, street fights, casual sex--the rootless escapades of the young and poor, poised on the brink of manhood and trying to avoid it.

Charef is an outsider in more ways than one: Algerian, ex-factory worker, son of an unskilled laborer. One of the strengths of this unusually fine, perceptive, evocative first film is the way he adjusts the audience, almost at once, to an outsider’s viewpoint. As in “Los Olvidados” or “Pixote,” we simply plunge in with the characters, live their world for a few hours and gradually understand what drives them to a life that seems initially amoral, empty and ruthless.

This cruel life is presented with a vigor that makes it seem fresh rather than callous, that alerts us to the paradoxical warmth, tenderness and compassion that sometimes animates it.

There are few prettifications. Majdid refuses to work, and hangs around with his pal, Pat (Remi Martin). The bond between the two is intense but tacit: They say little and express themselves in almost constant motion--”going places.” They are simply young punks--and though they come from a milieu of rank poverty, they are never portrayed as victims. (Both newcomers give excellent performances.)

Nor, despite their interracial friendship, is Majdid pushed forth as a victim of prejudice--though, at his own school, Charef was automatically placed in the “retarded “ section “with all the other Arab boys.” There are never any cheap grabs for sympathy: only a hard, seemingly pitiless clarity, a determination to show life as it is and was. We watch this pair steal bags in the Metro, free-lance as pimps for a pathetic local prostitute, entice and “roll” homosexuals, beat up opposing gang members, get loaded, steal cars and head for the beach. Their credo seems simply to keep grabbing pleasure on the run, outracing the inevitable. By the end, the inevitable arrives.

But Majdid and Pat show a curious code, given their status as petty criminals. Gradually, we see this code as anything but empty. In a world with few limits or protections, the only lines you can draw become precious, and any kind of moral sensibility or statement important.

Their status outside morality or society is a sham. As long as they avoid work, youth and strength make them princes of the streets. But soon, the only street princes will be actual criminals--like Balou (Charly Chemouny).

Balou is the source of the title: As a slow-witted boy, he mistook his teacher’s “The Theorem of Archimedes” for “Le The au Harem d’Archi Ahmed” (Tea in Archie Ahmed’s Harem)--and ran away when he was ridiculed. When he returns, his ignorance has become wolfish bliss: He’s a wealthy criminal, with a sleek doxy in an expensive car, and he plasters the windshield with franc notes.

Charef is a fine modern film realist. We see Majdid’s world with a swift, gray lucidity, a relentlessness that never quite conceals undertones of tenderness and hope.

The film may have one of the best, truest portrayals of a teen-age friendship any movie has given us. Nothing seems exaggerated. Every moment--even in several scenes that verge on melodrama--rings true. At the end, at the edge of the sea (as in Truffaut’s “The 400 Blows,” we get a glimpse of the morality that always seemed absent from their world, the responsibility they evaded, the adulthood they had fled. It’s a chastening scene--just, lucid, almost beautiful. “Tea in the Harem,” (Times-rated: Mature) for all its sordidness, earns that moment by looking at life bravely and clearly, by never averting its eyes, by joining with its characters rather than salving them with pity.