We are on the edge of the Moroccan desert. Bleak, low mountains, vast sky. A flight of birds fills the screen, and then is gone. Two boys prepare to take a herd of goats to find what food they can on the hillside, and I think: let's stay here - although I know we won't. We don't. Before long we are in San Diego, California, where a middle-aged Mexican nanny is putting two American children to bed; then in a glittering Japanese city, where a group of deaf-mute girls is ferociously playing volleyball in the school gym.

LRB 25 January 2007 | PDF Download