“The Forgiven” (M) *** and a half

MOROCCO is where writer/director John Michael McDonagh took Ralph Fiennes and Jessica Chastain to play the principal characters in a very serious drama based on a novel by Lawrence Osborne.

“The Forgiven” runs for 117 minutes with precious few laughs apart from two rather unlovable Brit gay blokes who’ve rented the house in which much of the action takes place. And they’re easier to laugh at than with.

The narrative unfolds among sand and not very high-elevated locations in the High Atlas Mountains region where Abdellah (Ismael Kanater) holds sway. We don’t meet Abdellah until the screenplay carefully sets the scene of westerner visitors lording it over local servants. Kanater’s performance when Abdellah chooses to reveal his real feelings is worth the wait.

The drama develops as Jo (Chastain) and David (Fiennes), driving at night to spend a weekend partying in their friends’ rented house, when suddenly, too late for David to take evasive action, the headlights reveal a young Arab man Driss. Jo and David figure that they can say it was an accident and having killed Driss won’t greatly matter. Wrong. His dad is Abdellah and Arab shrewdness is going to be a significant factor.

Comparing Westerner behaviour in front of stiff-upper-lip Moroccan servants, “The Forgiven” is essentially a serious drama trying to dodge the inevitable. 

Class differences between masters and servants share the film’s ambience with tensions arising from the road accident. David and Jo aren’t the most charming of characters, he having a smattering conscience about Driss, she enjoying liquor and lasciviousness. I sometimes found the sound quality difficult. 

At Dendy, Palace Electric