QUICK AND DIRTY: LIVE FROM THE RED SEA

Twenty-eight-year-old Aya (Fatma Sfar) is very beautiful and sad. She works in a hotel in the small Tunisian town of Tozeur. She has an affair with her married manager, who insists that she should wait yet another two years before he divorces his wife, and that she should be grateful for the mere fact that she wasn’t part of the latest wave of redundancies. She replies: “what should I be happy about?”, revealing that relative stability does not equate to satisfaction. At home, Aya’s relationship to her parents is equally fraught. She resents that they made her stop her studies, and have instead “enslaved” her since the age of 14. They once sought to marry her to the highest biggest, revealing that their parental allegiance is purely transactional. Aya craves liberation, even considering a hymenoplasty in the process.

Aya is the sole survivor of a horrific bus crash on the desert mountains. She seizes the opportunity to start a brand new life in Tunis, the nation’s cosmopolitan capital. She changes her name to Amina, and does not inform anyone back home about her survival (instead allowing her parent to bask in the large compensation package they are about to receive). She rents a room inside Lobna’s comfortable apartment. Her landlady is an outgoing woman, who promptly introduces her lodger to the city’s vibrant night life, packed with randy men and laced with alcohol and other drugs.

One day, the police murder a man called Karim in a night club. after he allegedly flirted with Aya/Amina. The investigators force her to become a formal witness. She has to lie under oath, falsely claiming that the hapless bloke indeed harassed her. She does it hesitantly and ridden with guilt. Her priority is to keep her real identity secret, and to carry on her life under her chosen alias. Amina wishes to keep Aya buried in the past. But the repercussions of the ordeal are bigger than anyone anticipated, with the relatives of the victim demanding a more profound investigation.

Despite never harming anyone, Aïcha is well aware that she has broken the law in more ways than one, and that false identity and perjury could land her in jail for a very long time. The chief police officer – a woman, incidentally – forces Aya/Amina to sign a “transparency of statement” – a document stating that her original statement is true, and that she will never retract. In other words: she is doubly coerced into lying. Our protagonist becomes horribly trapped in a web of lies that she created in order to vouch for her independence. She is prey to the deeply corrupt institutions that run her country: the police, the courts, and even central government. Everyone is more concerned about their career prospects, with the truth becoming the first casualty. Aïcha weaves together various threads of socio-political commentary – female oppression, institutional corruption, religion and tradition – to excellent results. The unexpected twists and turns keep viewers hooked for the entire film duration of 123 minutes.

Interestingly, the niqab becomes a transformational weapon. Our protagonist uses the Muslim garment – often associated with oppression in the West – in order to conceal her identity and enjoy anonymity in some of the movie’s most crucial moments.

Auspicious production values help to support the narrative. The bus crash is very well-staged, and notably convincing. A hallucinatory drug-taking scene is beautiful and moving. Sfar’s performance is firm and confident. She crafts a young woman keen to change her life, yet barely able to cope with the multiple pressures that threaten to crush her on her mission to freedom.

This very effective film is dented by a disingenuous claim. The opening title card states that Aïcha is inspired by true events. In reality, one single development (the bus crash with the sole survivor) is based on real life. However well executed, a film does not have the right to claim veracity based on one element of the intrigue. By that stretch of imagination, just about any fiction is loosely based on reality. Aïcha is an entirely fictional social thriller. It should embrace its artistic freedoms more wholeheartedly. Cinema has the power to craft fascinating stories – actual or not -, and this Mehdi M. Barsaoui does exceedingly well.

Aïcha just premiered in the Main Competition of the 4th Red Sea International Film Festival.