Hi! Welcome Back To Big Sigh 🌼
Simply Divine
Have you ever paused a movie mid-watch and thought to yourself:
“Holy shit, I think I’m watching the best movie I’ve ever seen.”
Wellll, that happened to me this week. The movie in question was Divines, the debut film of French director Uda Benyamina. It was released in 2016 and followed by critical acclaim, it even won the Caméra d'Or at Cannes that year. However, I only heard of it through my trusty Letterboxd app under a list entitled Underrated Coming Of Age.
Let me start with this — Divines is a very sad movie. Without spoiling anything, it can at times be extremely difficult to watch. But it is so captivating, so charming, and it depicts female friendship in the most beautiful of ways. The story follows Dounia and Maimouna, two girls who live in the banlieues of Paris where crime and religion exist side by side. Dounia has an entrepreneurial spirit. Fed up with the vocational training provided to her in school, she wants to get rich and she wants to do it fast. With Maimouna as her second in command, they scheme for cash in various ways but eventually decide their best bet is to impress drug dealer Rebecca, and join her crew.
What happens next is a crash course in the fast life. There’s a scene where the pair fantasize about driving a Ferrari through Thailand that is so brilliant and iconic it’s worth a watch for that alone.
It also has the best use of “social media found footage” that I’ve seen in a film so far. There are sections that splice in Snapchat stories in a way that feels surprisingly natural, something that soooo many other films try (and fail) to do authentically.
I’ve been thinking about it a lot since I watched it (in my mind, one of the hallmarks of a good movie). There are so many sticky moments. Divines is about coming of age, ambition, faith, friendship, class, and consequence but it’s also about femininity. While it’s extremely French not American, there are lots of parallel themes to Mikki Kendall’s Hood Feminism. Where housing, food security, clean water, gun reform, minimum wage, etc are all framed as key intersectional feminist issues in addition to the mainstream platform of reproductive rights. Worth a read!
You can watch Divines on Netflix now. I highly suggest you do, just be fully prepared to get your heart ripped out.
Also Watched This Week
La Haine
I was having a French moment, ok? Zut alors.
Judas and The Black Messiah
A MUST WATCH. Daniel Kaluuya is one of the most powerful actors of this generation. Did you know he took opera lessons to prep for the speech scenes? Also Dominique Fishback is killer.
Fishtank
California Dreamin’ innit?!
Whisper of The Heart
Extremely sweet.
Big Time Adolescence
Attention Peter Davidson, I am single.
Winter Panzanella-Ish
Panzanella is bread salad so I guess this is a panzanella but the lack of tomatoes makes it difficult for me to say for sure. One of the best parts of panzanella is when the tomato juices (tomatoes are the oysters of the vegetable world don’t @ me) soak up into the bread. Leaving you with that heavenly crispy-gone-soggy texture. In this recipe, an acidic vinaigrette mimics tomato innards, squash and apples take the place of cukes and tomates, and onions hold their ground with added smokey flavor. Whatever way you slice it, it’s a big beautiful winter salad best served with juicy chicken thighs or crispy skinned salmon.
1 small butternut squash, cubed
2 Honeycrisp apples, cubed,
1 bunch Tuscan kale, de-ribbed and chopped
1 red onion, cut into petals and charred on a cast iron
¼ loaf day old bread, torn
Handful of Parsley, torn
1 cara cara orange, zested and juiced
1 lemon, zested and juiced
Pinch of onion powder
Pinch of aleppo
Pinch of cumin
Splash of white wine vinegar
S&P
Good olive oil
Set the oven to 400°
Toss butternut squash and half of your chopped apples in olive oil, S&P, onion powder, aleppo, and cumin. Roast for 30-40 minutes, until tender.
Toss your bread in olive oil and S&P and toast in the oven for 5-10 minutes until slightly golden and dried out
Mix olive oil, vinegar, lemon juice & zest, orange juice & zest, and S&P together into a vinaigrette. Then, toss the kale in a spoonful of dressing and massage until slightly soft.
When your squash and apples are roasted and cooled. Toss kale, raw apples, roasted apples, squash, onion, bread, and parsley with dressing. Top with torn parsley, flaky salt, and cracked black pepper.
Thank you thank you thank you for reading, it means the 🌏! See you next week🌬