Bitter Moon: Ayub Concocts a Taut Domestic Thriller
“It takes time for a bird to escape, even after someone has opened the doors to its cage,” wrote Ayaan Hirsi Ali, famed author of The Caged Virgin, former politician, and critic of Islam who fled an arranged marriage as a young woman. Caged women, both mentally and physically, are the subject of Iraqi-born Austrian filmmaker Kurdwin Ayub’s sophomore narrative feature, Moon, which expertly exemplifies this frustrating struggle to flee an enclosure even when opportunities present themselves to do so. Although the narrative’s final moments suggest there’s no real satisfactory ending, even on an individual level, at least one of Ayub’s protagonists pivots to the possibility of self actualization.… Read the rest
