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Working as a film editor from 1970 to 1990 (when she contributed to most of the important Arab films), Moufida Tlatli enjoyed a reputation as a big sister/mother to many younger directors who remember with affection her generosity, sensitivity, and talent. It was unsurprising to them that she excelled with her directorial debut, "The Silences of the Palace", a work of taste, beauty and depth. It spent the following three years scooping prizes across the globe.
Tlatli's decency and compassion are very much in evidence in "La Saison des Hommes", which - in digging deeply into the oppression and consequent suffering of a Tunisian wife and mother - is less a feminist tract, more a plea for understanding, tolerance and, hopefully, change. The humanity of the situation is always to the fore.
Moving almost invisibly from present to past (through selective compositions and careful editing), the film centres on a dysfunctional family which begins to crumble when the father, working in Tunis for eleven months of the year, returns home to the island of Djerba for the remaining month - 'the season of men', to which other women look forward to like giddy schoolgirls. His wife, in Arab terms a radical upstart, wants to join her husband in Tunis, and the result of her insistence, and disappointment, takes us to the present and the shaky relationships of her own daughters. The director extracts searching, sensitive performances from a cast of (to us) unknowns, and is also gifted at rendering silence meaningful and beauty ironic. Touching, truthful, and tasteful.
"La Saison des Hommes (The Season of Men)" will be shown at the from 29th June 2001. Arabic with English subtitles.
