Wadjda is one of those films with a reputation that precedes any question of its quality. It's the first film by a Saudi woman and the first film to be shot in Saudi Arabia, but oddly enough, it's thoroughly Western in both its narrative and outlook.
Thus combined, Wadjda becomes a film that is at once engaging and predictable, and depressing and uplifting in equal measure. The central performance by Waad Mohammed is the life and soul of Wadjda, and although the adults often falter in their roles, Mohammed and Abdulrahman Algohani, the boy who plays her only friend, play wonderfully off each other.
The film is quietly subversive due to Wadjda's adroit manipulation of the society she lives in,…