Football coverage has effectively come to an end for me so it’s time to rededicate my time to film before I head out on vacation. Once I get back, it’ll just about be time for the 5th Annual Sheist Film Awards, so I’ll have my work cut out for me to get caught up. Profile has an engaging use of the desktop interface style of filmmaking backed by strong performances in the lead roles and effective, suspenseful storytelling. I highlighted it as one of my picks back in May 2021 but I only just got around to watching it on HBO Max.
Told entirely through hard drive recordings of a desktop computer interface, a journalist creates a fake profile on social media to uncover the ISIS recruiting tactics of young European women.
Based on the book by Anna Érelle, In the Skin of a Jihadist, director Timur Bekmambetov adapted the screenplay with Britt Poulton and Olga Kharina. It took three years for a distribution deal to lead to a theatrical release in the spring of 2021. It’s tough to say why exactly because movies like Unfriended and Searching had already laid the groundwork for this kind of storytelling to have its place theatrically, and Covid was still two years away from shutting that all down in when this movie made the film festival rounds back in 2018. Regardless, maybe it just feels more at home now.
A lot has changed since 2018 and many of us spend an extended period of time sitting in front of a computer, for both work and leisure, so there’s a big hurdle to get over when deciding to tell the story of a movie that takes place entirely within the confines of that digital interface. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, but it does have its challenges. Namely, how can you make something that’s fairly common and unexciting and use that to craft a suspenseful thriller that uses all that familiarity to its advantage? Well, see a film like “Host” that was able to do just that by relying on that familiarity to disarm the audience.
Unlike some of its stylistic predecessors, this film isn’t attempting to tell the story as it happens. It’s revealed fairly early on that what we’re witnessing is some unseen third party accessing a series of recordings where the main plotline is unfolding. That gives the movie a sort of voyeuristic element like we are seeing something we shouldn’t be seeing. As we learn more about the main character, Amy/Melody, that element becomes more pronounced when the lines between her story and her reality become more and more blurred.
Valene Kane gets the challenge of playing that lead and if she’s not good, then the whole thing is going to struggle to land. Fortunately, she did a great job capturing all the different stressors that her character was dealing with and was also able to carve out some very intimate, human moments in the unlikeliest of places. There are certainly moments where you may ask yourself, “what is she doing?” but that doesn’t detract from her portrayal.
She primarily shares the film with Shazad Latif who plays the ISIS recruiter Bilel. They actually have good chemistry together despite all of their interactions taking place via Skype video calls. Latif is charming and smooth-talking so it’s easy for him to fabricate and embellish the path for new converts to join him in Syria. The more the two talk, the more the lines are blurred.
The whole thing is charged with a sense of intensity that’s simmering under the surface of this flirtation between the two of them and it works well. Alarmingly enough, there was a story that came out just recently about an American woman who was charged with leading an all-female ISIS battalion. Despite this movie’s sensational presentation, it hits the nail on the head and is more accurate than we’d like to believe.
Recommendation: If you don’t have an issue with this kind of storytelling, this is a very effective use of the computer interface backed up by strong performances.
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