Satin Rouge
Winter 2007 Main series
Sunday, January 21, 2007 at 4:00pm
Sunday, January 21, 2007 at 7:00pm
Monday, January 22, 2007 at 7:00pm
Acadia Cinema's Al Whittle Theatre
450 Main Street, Wolfville, NS
Directed by Raja Amari
Starring Hiam Abbass, Hend El Fahem, Maher Kamoun, Monia Hichri, Faouzia Badr, Nadra Lamloum, Abou Moez El Fazaa, Salad Miled
Rated NR ·
1h 35m
France
Arabic and French
A widowed Tunisian seamstress takes an unlikely journey of self-discovery in writer-director Raja Amari’s sumptuous and sensual Satin Rouge. While investigating a suspected liaison between her headstrong teenaged daughter (Hend El Fahem) and a cabaret musician, young widow Lilia (Hiam Abbass) becomes drawn to an exotic night-club nether-world of Rubenesque belly dancers and nocturnal pleasure-seekers. She strikes up a friendship with one of the dancers, then eventually takes the stage herself—quickly becoming the favourite of both cabaret patrons and the club’s hot-blooded drummer, Chokri (Maher Kamoun). As she gradually sheds her shapeless, matronly house dresses for the flamboyantly sequinned bar-girl garb, she also begins to emerge from her cocoon of melancholy and loneliness. Critic David Stratton compares Amari’s tale to Douglas Sirk’s American suburban melodramas of the 1950s (particularly All That Heaven Allows) calling the film a “handsomely produced and exhilarating romantic drama.”