Culture Vulture: Arab film sheds taboos

WASHINGTON, Sept. 17 (UPI) -- "Satin Rouge," is a delightfully refreshing Arabic film given to us by Raja Amari, a young Tunisian director, and relative newcomer to the world of cinema.

At a time when much of the news emanating from the Islamic world tends to portray the region in a negative, explosive and usually uncomplimentary light, Amari offers us a glimpse of the Arab world that many Americans might find -- much to their surprise -- oddly similar to their own.

In her first feature film, Amari shows us a world where, much as in the West, people have daily wants, needs, headaches, and similar problems when it comes to raising their teenage children. She lets us know that young people the world over also have the same craving for love, lust and romance. That young girls are interested in the latest fashions and young boys in sports. And yes, of course, surprise, surprise ... even Muslim women living in a conservative society can have sexual desires and fantasies.

In "Satin Rouge," Amari relates the story of a Tunisian widow working as a seamstress who discovers her sensuality when she stumbles -- quite by happenstance -- upon a local cabaret while searching for her teenage daughter. She enters it with great trepidation, as one would venture into the unfamiliar, not knowing what to expect, but ends up fascinated by a world she never knew, or even dared to explore.

Before long, her life is altered from one of extreme ennui of daily household chores and dubbed soap operas, to the fast-paced environment of the nightclub where she starts to work as a belly dancer.

The widow, Lilia, is brilliantly portrayed by Hiam Abbas, who bears a slight resemblance to Catherine Deneuve, and could easily pass as the Arab counterpart of the French movie goddess.

The film follows Lilia as she increasingly finds herself transformed from a matronly, plainly dressed and unpretentious housewife, into a sensuous, sexually hungry and awakened woman, full of desires. Lilia is soon wedged in a bizarre love triangle with her daughter and a fiery musician from the nightclub where she secretly performs every night, and with whom her daughter is in love. Living in a conservative society that frowns heavily upon Western norms, both mother and daughter are forced to tread discreetly, lying to each other. In a role reversal, Lilia is the one who sneaks quietly out at night, and back home after spending the evenings dancing for money and the thrill of it in the cabaret.

"In Tunisia, as in every Arabic country, no decent woman has her place in such a 'depraved' milieu," says Amari.

But similar to a butterfly emerging from its cocoon, Lilia, too, learns to shed one layer of isolation after another, along with her melancholy, loneliness and moroseness. She learns to spread her wings, to bloom, and in the process changes her lifestyle, hairstyle and mannerisms, discovering new friends in the previously forbidden, and vice-filled world of the "cabaret." But at the same time she stumbles upon new tribulations that normally accompany this nightlife.

Amari portrays the Arab woman under a very different light from what most people in the West would expect of an Arab woman. This is definitely not your conventional Arabic film.

"Satin Rouge" (Red Satin) premiered in the International Forum at the 2002 Berlin Film Festival and won the Best New Director award at the 2002 Seattle International Film Festival. The film also won the Audience Award at the 2002 Maine International Film Festival. (In Arabic with English subtitles, it opens Friday in cinema art theaters in the United States.)

(The Culture Vulture is a column written by UPI's Life & Mind editor, and reflects on current trends, issues and events. Comments may be sent to [email protected].)