Hideous Kinky

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While there's little of the sexual titillation hinted at in the title, director Gillies MacKinnon's '60s-period adaptation of Esther Freud's novel instead focuses on pilgrimages both personal and spiritual through the eyes of a young child whose mother has escaped an unhappy English marriage for adventure and enlightenment in Marrakesh and Algeria. The soundtrack serves the proceedings well, balancing period rock pieces with often captivating samples of North Africa's rich indigenous folk music. Even the more familiar Western pieces here (Canned Heat's 'On the Road Again,' 'Here Comes the Sun' by Richie Havens, Jefferson Airplane's 'White Rabbit' and 'Somebody to Love') find new resonance in this context, as do less familiar gems such as The Incredible String Band's 'Worlds They Rise and Fall' and 'Road' by Nick Drake. Jil Jilala's 'Baba Baba Mektoubi' and 'The Tortoise's Song' by Khalifa Ould Eide and Dimi mint Abba offer mesmerizing, if very different, introductions to the musics of North Africa, while the title-cut collaboration between Kudsi Erguner and members of the London Pops Orchestra forges a satisfying, albeit slightly New Age-y, alliance between East and West.