Inspired opening!

"Addressing conflict by conflicting itself, Free Zone's effect is almost avant-garde." - Ed Gonzalez

While the beginning scene is quite inspired, I feel like the movie never lives up to that. Putting image over image like the film liked to do was a bad choice. I didn't care that much about anything going on. Portman is nice to look at but when is she not? The ending was mildly amusing though... so basically the beginning and end are both good but the rest is decent at best.

The first half hour is pretty good, but the last hour is tedious and uninteresting. I really don't like middle eastern culture at all, and the second half of this is drenched in it. There was barely a plot, and the ending was just pointless.There was no resolve in the ending, and not in an ambiguous way, in a way where it seems like they just decided to cut out the last 15 minutes. It looked like it was supposed to be meaningful, but it wasn't. Natalie Portman did a good performance though.

That was some impressive crying there... an interesting and strangely effective film with a great cast and ending.

The opening sequence is one of the most hypnotic and mesmerizing I've seen recently. The three lead actresses manage to sublimate a relatively erratic and yet powerful screenplay. Gitai at its best.