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Fair warning: This review contains spoilers! Bad me.
Satin rouge is a Tunisian belly-dancing film. This
I know for sure. What I can’t quite figure out, though, is
exactly what its agenda is. Doubtless, many viewers will see
it and read it as an attempt at feminist empowerment amid
a male-dominated society. Probably the majority, in fact.
After all, it’s the story of a de-sexed middle-aged widow
who finds confidence and a more positive outlook on life through
the world of dance. But then there’s the other side, the one
that hints that the only way women can find themselves is
by flaunting their sexuality. Obviously, this isn’t such a
positive message. And it won’t be a very popular interpretation
either. But, really, Satin rouge never seems too sure
of what message it’s trying to get across. And therein lies
the main problem.
Perhaps it’s simply a case of the screenplay being stripped
down to the basics in the translation process (the film is
in Arabic with English subtitles). The script does seem very
weak, and this would definitely account for the muddled and
conflicting messages coming through. But in all honesty, this
still doesn’t excuse it. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
had a bare-bones script and still managed to drive its point
home. No, I think the problem here is the result of something
quite different, and a little charming, even: Raja Amari
is so in love with the art of belly-dancing, with the sheer
expressionistic liberation the dancer can experience, that
she just kind of forgets what she’s trying to say.
Satin rouge is the story of Lilia (Abbass),
a widow who works out of her own home as a seamstress and
cares for her college-student daughter Salma (El Fahem).
And that’s about all she does. That’s until she discovers
that Salma is secretly seeing a cabaret band member named
Chokri (Kammoun). After following Chokri to the cabaret,
and of the suspicion that Salma is hanging out there when
she’s supposed to be at a friend’s house, Lilia goes to the
cabaret to investigate. She doesn’t find Salma there (who’s
being a good girl and is in fact at the friend’s house), but
she does find a whole new culture, an almost underground world
of sequins and beads and satin rouge. She makes friends
with Folla (Hichri), the star belly-dancer at the cabaret,
who helps Lilia find her own calling as a dancer.
Hiam Abbass has a very natural beauty, and in Lilia she creates
a character whose beauty is enhanced by her sadness and is
only lacking that animation that she eventually gets through
dancing. With her high-arched, darkly defined eyebrows and
tight facial features, it’s like watching a prep school headmistress
finally learn to cut loose, and it’s awesome. In dancing,
she’s practically learning to breathe, learning how to get
the joy out of life that has eluded her for so long, and watching
it, you can’t think of anyone who deserves it more. Anytime
Lilia is on the screen, it’s easy to forget any flaws the
film may have, because Abbass leaves no space between the
audience and herself; it’s the kind of performance that is
able to honor the traditional female role even as it taps
into the rawness of discovering that new you that you were
always meant to find.
But there’s still those pesky message issues. Lilia starts
her own affair with Chokri, who has no idea that he is sleeping
with his girlfriend’s mother. In the end, this gives Lilia
power over Chokri, and in a scene of surprising Queen Bitchiness,
Lilia basically tells Chokri that he will marry Salma or risk
her finding everything out. What exactly is this trying to
tell us? Supposedly, up until this point, the whole film has
been built on the idea of a liberating kind of empowerment,
a kind with the distinctly positive effect of helping a mourning
woman overcome her pain, but now, suddenly we’re supposed
to allow blackmail onto the list of privileges that come with
this liberation? An entire film based on good intentions is
suddenly turned on to a more dubious power definition, and
we’re expected to swallow that. It mars an otherwise amiable
little film that up until that point, gamely insists that
breaking out is the only way to find happiness.
—Cole Sowell
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