‘Bye-Bye’ Embarks on a Rich Odyssey of Self-Discovery

The Marseilles of “Bye-Bye” is far removed from the idyllic community of the Marcel Pagnol films and the glamorous gangster nightclubs of “Borsalino.”

It is set in a picturesque quarter of narrow streets lined by fine old apartment houses, now crowded with families from North Africa. The area exudes vitality but also danger--and so does this harrowing, captivating second film from Karim Dridi, maker of “Pigalle”--that raw, romantic melodrama of Paris’ venerable equivalent of Times Square, the raffish Place Pigalle.

After a quick glimpse of a person, perhaps disabled, saying “bye-bye,” the meaning of which becomes clear much later in the film, we find Ismael (Sami Bouajila), a sensitive-looking man of 25, arriving from Paris with his 14-year-old brother Mouloud (Ouassini Embarek) at the home of his uncle (Benhaissa Ahouari). With traditional Arab hospitality, the uncle embraces his nephews despite the fact that his small, shabby-elegant apartment already is crowded with his wife, his elderly mother and his three children.

Dridi gradually lets us realize that the brothers aren’t actually on a visit, that a family tragedy too painful for discussion hangs over the guilt-ridden Ismael and that much against his wishes the younger brother is soon to be sent to Tunisia, to which his parents have returned. Ismael quickly discovers he will be having to make a fresh start amid considerable tension. The job on the docks that his uncle has gotten for him confronts him with constant intimidation by a group of Arab-hating laborers.

Meanwhile, the bright, rebellious Mouloud has been taken under the wing of his older cousin Rhida (Sofiane Mammeri), a drifter who does drugs and clashes constantly with his strict father. It is an everyday struggle for this Arab community to survive in an often profoundly hostile society. Yet the very idea of its French-born younger people returning to the land of their ancestors is an anathema.

Essentially, “Bye-Bye” is an odyssey of self-discovery for the two brothers, but Dridi is a tantalizing master teller of simultaneous stories with a wicked sense of exactly when to cut away, leaving us in suspense. Rhida and Mouloud spray-paint graffiti on a car belonging to the worst of the dock bullies. You just know they will be discovered and have to run for their lives, but Dridi cuts away just as the bad guys are gaining on the cousins, taking his own sweet time to let us know their fate.

While Dridi generates suspense, he also reveals the richness of family life with its linchpin matriarch (the marvelous Jamila Darwich-Farah), a strong, modern woman yet also the bridge between the world left behind and the world of the present--a world of more destructive temptations than genuine opportunities.

With a style as vital as its formidable cast and its driving, multicultural music, the film glows with the clean, clear images and easy flexibility of John Mathieson’s camera work.

In its passion and eloquence “Bye-Bye” brings to mind “Rocco and His Brothers,” the Visconti masterpiece about a poor family imperiled by a move to the big city hoping for a better life. As Dridi himself has said, “Bye-Bye” is finally about letting go without forgetting.

* Unrated. The film has various scenes of drug-taking and drug-dealing, some sex and nudity, and some violence and strong language.

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‘Bye-Bye’

Sami Bouajila: Ismael

Ouassini Embarek: Mouloud

Sofiane Mammeri: Rhida

Jamila Darwich-Farah: The Aunt

A Turbulent Arts release of a co-production of Thelma Films AG-CMC, La Sept Cinema-SNC, with the participation of Canal Plus, CNC, Eurimage, European Script Fund and PROCIREP. Writer-director Karim Dridi. Producer Alain Rozanes/ADR Productions. Cinematographer John Mathieson. Editor Lise Beaulieu. Costumes Emmanuelle Pertus. Music Steve Shehan & Jimmy Oihid. Set decorator Gilles Bontemps. In French and Arabic, with English subtitles. Running time: 1 hour, 45 minutes.

* Exclusively at the Music Hall, 9036 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills, (310) 274-6869.