May 6, 1999
Web posted at: 3:58 p.m. EDT (1958 GMT)

By Reviewer Paul Tatara

(CNN) -- First things first. Is "Hideous Kinky" just about the worst movie title you've ever heard? Of course it's based on Esther Freud's autobiographical novel of the same title. But couldn't they have come up with something a bit more fathomable? You know -- to make people want to actually see it?

Since you were probably wondering, "hideous kinky" is an invented phrase repeatedly cited by two elementary school-age sisters who evidently have a lot of free time on their hands for linguistic experimentation. The movie itself is neither hideous nor kinky. Nor is it terribly interesting.

MULTIMEDIA
Theatrical preview for "Hideous Kinky"
Windows Media	28K	80K

Kate Winslet -- as a spiritually seeking mom who tromps around the desert looking for The Big Answer in the early 1970s -- gives a lovely, feet-firmly-planted performance. This is no small accomplishment, since the character, as written, is a whole lot less than grounded.

In fact, the biggest problem with this sometimes unfocused but still watchable film is that Winslet's Julia is dragging two little girls around with her (over horrifically challenging terrain) as if they're excess baggage on her journey to enlightenment. After a while, this lackadaisical child-rearing method is exactly what the movie comes to be about, and that's the most likeable part.

Before that, though -- and it takes up most of the screen time -- it's hard to decide if a viewer is supposed to be appalled or illuminated by Winslet's slipping sense of mom-ness.

This may not bother you all that much, as far as Winslet is concerned. She's a very appealing actress, and she's well-cast as a mother; there's definitely something maternal about her. Although quite beautiful, she's not your basic Hollywood cheetah. She seems like she'd be a good hugger.

Julia has recently been divorced from a philandering British husband. To heal her psychic wounds -- and, one assumes, to simply start over again from scratch -- she hauls her two daughters out to Morocco with her.

There, she barely ekes out a living selling handmade rag dolls, all while trying to hip herself to that groovy, '60s-generated vibe of goodness and happiness. She'll do this by becoming a Sufi Muslim, provided her kids don't drive her crazy with their endless bitching and she can stick with the prayer sessions.

Many of us have known people quite a bit like Julia, so it's possible to sympathize. But Billy MacKinnon's screenplay (he's the brother of the film's director, Gillies MacKinnon) never digs deep enough into the character's psyche to generate much concern for where she's heading. When it comes to the secrets of our souls, the fruit is at the bottom.

Winslet's character is supposed to be somewhat shallow, but after a while it just starts to feel like the movie itself isn't all that deep. There's a lot of crying. And nuggets of desert wisdom drop from the tongues of several characters, but it's hard to keep your mind off how much the kids must be hating the trip.

Julia enters a relationship with a rather shady "boyfriend" (he causes her so much unnecessary commotion, he doesn't deserve the title), played with charisma by Saïd Taghmaoui. But the performers who really grab you are Carrie Mullan and Bella Riza as those precocious daughters. There are several scenes in which these kids display more common sense than Winslet and Taghmaoui's characters combined.

At one point, oddly enough, the movie turns into a Moroccan version of the lovely Bill Forsythe film "Housekeeping," in which two very close sisters are torn apart by their varying allegiances to a socially inept aunt. Both Mullan and Riza negotiate this sudden schism with a worldliness that seems beyond their years. This is the polar opposite of what Winslet is expected to do, and it's a lot more thought-provoking, too.

For all its inherent flaws, the movie is beautifully shot. It doesn't look like a coffee-table book, thank God, but bursts of color in the middle of all that sand and dust keep the visuals jumping out at you. A cement wall with smears of bright yellow paint on it does more to suggest the inner workings of Julia's vagabond mind than prayers and textbook soul-searching ever could.

Sometimes the truth creeps up when you aren't looking for it, and the truth of this movie is that Julia (who is in no way equipped to live in the desert) needs to get the hell out of there and take those kids back to England. You can pray in your apartment just as easily.

There's some nudity in "Hideous Kinky," on the part of both Winslet and Taghmaoui. Winslet should keep covered up; she's too good an actress to make everybody think she's going to flash them in every film. (Leonardo DiCaprio doesn't sketch her this time, probably because he was out dancing with a model somewhere.) Warning: The soundtrack prominently features the lyrically cretinous song, "Horse with No Name." Rated R. 99 minutes.