Arab Blues - A Divan à Tunis Directed by Manele Labidi Labbé
Arab Blues - A Divan à Tunis
Directed by Manele Labidi Labbé
Starring: Golshifteh Farahani, Majd Mastoura, Aïsha Ben Miled, Feryel Chammari, Hichem Yacoubi, Ramla Ayari, Moncef Ajengui, Amen Arbi, Zied El Mekki, Oussama Kochkar
Country: France, Tunisia
Year 2019
Author of review: Roberto Matteucci
Click Here for Italian Version
"He is Freud, my boss."
Sigmund Freud was very talkative in writing about religion. However, he was indifferent to Islamism. A choice not humoral but deliberate. He felt ignorant about the subject and therefore abstained from talking about it. He just mentions Islam in his books Moses and Monotheism, he wrote:
“The author regretfully has to admit that he cannot give more than one sample, that he has not the expert knowledge will allow him perhaps to add that the founding of the Mohammedan religion seems to him to be an abbreviated repetition of the Jewish one, in imitation of which it made its appearance." (1)
He believes that he does not have enough competence to examine it, so, he is not interested. It is intelligent and respectful behaviour. It will be a mutual scepticism.
Muslim countries ignore Freud and psychoanalysis. They do not study in university and have very few professionals.
One of Freud's scholars, of Arab origin, is the Algerian Fethi Benslama. He reconciled these two distant worlds, confirms it in an interview:
“Because psychoanalytic approaches are largely unknown today in the Orient. For example, psychology is one subject that is almost never taught at the universities in Arab countries. The Muslim world resists psychoanalysis.
…
First of all, psychoanalysis is the only scientific discipline that was invented by a single man: Sigmund Freud. Freud was a Jew, and Muslims thus perceive psychoanalysis as a form of Jewishness. And because of the Israel-Palestine conflict, the Arabic world rejects on principle everything Jewish.”
…
Many Muslims think that psychoanalysis propagates atheism. The way in which mental illness is seen in the Orient is also very different from in the West: the dominant theory is that the mentally ill are possessed by jinns. So they are not sent to a psychologist for treatment, but to the Imam for exorcism. This is the usual form of treatment. Mental illnesses are not understood as a medical problem, but as a supernatural phenomenon. Or a doctor prescribes anti-depressants, yet without accompanying the medication with therapy. … “ (2)
Psychoanalysis is linked to a Jew, so they consider it as a form of atheism. Furthermore, there is a different consideration of diseases and mental disorders: Arabs prefer to solve them with religion.
Why does a young Tunisian girl, after living ten years in Paris, move to Tunis to psychotherapy practice? The director Manele Labidi Labbé narrates it in the brilliant comedy Arab Blues - Un Divan à Tunis presented at the 76th Venice Film Festival.
The girl is Selma. The family allows her to install renovate the under-roof space in their building. Start the studio is not easy. She clashes with the Arab bureaucracy, meticulous and incomprehensible. Then it is necessary to be understood and find patients.
She listens to the advice of a mature woman, who skilfully manages a large and crowded hair salon.
Selma intelligently identifies a glimmer, and customers, many and of all kinds, will arrive. But the problems do not end, because, a stubborn police officer, Naim, shows an inflexibility more Swiss than Arab.
The opening scene is Selma's move. Among the various furniture brought from France, there is an allegorical black and white photograph of Sigmund Freud. A red fez has been added, to Arabize him.
Selma exhibits it with pride and with serenity she affirms that he is her boss, also Jew. The answer is caustic: "You will have problems with your neighbours."
The narration uses sarcastic dialogues, between the real and the imagination. The director plays with the misunderstandings of both. The psychoanalyst has perhaps forgotten about strict local traditions and, the Tunisians, are curious but not so open to taking orders from a Jew. Nobody knows Freud in Tunisia, while in the West he has widespread popularity.
Selma is determined, intellectual, courageous, extravagant, proud, free.
She is not afraid, she does not feel the anguish of fighting a new competition. Tunis is a difficult but friendly environment, it is only suspicious. Selma's uncle declares: "we have God, we do not need this bullshit".
The director points out two aspects, so summarized.
The first is the social one:
“It’s about parents trying to raise their kids in the context of economic turmoil and political uncertainties; it’s about people fighting against addiction, questioning their gender, their femininity, their spirituality; it’s about teenagers who want to break free and reinvent their own rules. In a word, it’s about resilience.
These [characters’ experiences] are universal and I hope everyone can relate to them.” (3)
The second is the psychological one, the author:
“Arab Blues explores the issue of individual and collective revolution and how these two are interdependent. No political revolution can entirely succeed without the revolution of intimacy. In the film, each character is going through their own intimate path.” (4)
In Tunisia, after the fall of President Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali, civil society is divided. One part looks for freedom and greater sexual, spiritual emancipation.
Selma buys an old van Peugeot decorated like an eighties hippy van.
Olfa is the younger sister, a rebellious teenager: "it is not a veil, it is a cover".
There is the ridiculous Selma interrogation by two policemen. They have a low cultural level, so they accuse the psychoanalyst of managing a brothel. They ignore what is psychoanalysis. One of them mimes the handcuffs gesture, threatening: sex is prison.
The social perspective is compared with the individual one. It seems impossible, but under a close and mistrust society, there are the will and the market for people eager to be psychoanalysed.
The most meaningful scene is in the beginning. Selma has a tough confrontation with reality: facing a barrier of Tunisian women, absolutely not submissive but on the contrary, all with a strong personality.
Selma talks to the salon lady owner. She asks if she can place an advertisement. The noise of voices from a packed hairdresser.
Mid-shot. Static camera. The lady is flashy, over the top, like the walls of the shop: floral wallpaper, two posters of hairstyles, a picture of a countryside landscape and a circular copy of Mona Lisa. She is occupy counting money. Selma is filmed from the back while she says: “I am a psychoanalyst. I'm opening a practice here.”
The light is separate, the solar one and the shadowed one.
Cut. Selma is framing, she is explaining the business. Usually noisy of a hairdresser.
Cut. The first shot returns. The mistress has a fan in her hand, suspiciously repeating: “A psychoanalyst practice here in Tunis?”
Cut. Close-up on Selma: “Yes. People need to talk.” Out of range the woman's voice “That's sure. And We Arabs talk a lot.”
Cut. Close-up of the woman. Moving the fan with hesitation and discusses with superiority, perhaps she imagines gain from Selma's offer: “My customers come here and talk a blue streak. But they leave with beautiful hair, like yours, or a new colour... Or they do the hammam, they talk and talk, they fret. But they leave nice and clean! What do people leave your office with?”
Cut. Selma close-up: “It depends. Everyone leaves with something of their own.”
Cut. The lady rubs her fingers like asking for money.
When Selma responds with a denial to the proposal of a fifty-fifty company, the owner challenges her. Order customers and workers to listen to Selma.
Significant sequence. Long-shot, static camera. In front of Selma, there is a wall of Arab women: young, less young, beautiful, less beautiful, thin, fat with clothes of all types, some with a towel on their heads. They have a doubtful and uncertain look. In the middle, there is a seated lady in a black dress with white polka dots.
Cut. Selma harangues the colourful audience: “It's a kind of like a journey inside yourself so you can find a door to a happier you.”
Cut. The polka dot woman asks: ”If I take the trip with you can you guarantee I'll have no more problems?”
Cut. Selma close-up: “Psychoanalysis changes their nature, talking with someone about them brings a new perspective.”
Eventually, something changed, Selma distributes business cards.
In this scene, there are the themes of the film. The main one is categorical: society's innovation can come from women. A Divan à Tunis is a totally feminine film. There is the shrewd prudence of the proprietor. There is curiosity. In women gathered in a group, there is no resentment or repudiation, they accept the invitation. Selma is capable of an ingenious allegory: portraying psychoanalysis as a journey. And Tunisians love to travel.
The studio is being successful. The lady of the salon and other women attend it. Men have joined, who have particularly bizarre delusions, reaffirming the feminine goal. Appointments with males are comical. Besides, editing creates harmonious and rhythmic unusual human cases.
It is the choral aspect of history. The clients are quite eccentric.
There is the dreamer of Arab dictators, upset because Putin is among them.
There is the imam without beard and with repressed family troubles.
There is the mummy's boy, visiting Selma with his mother.
There is the suspicious, he sees crimes everywhere, even in the studio.
There is the man who takes his dress off after is in the studio, he thinks it is the cover of a prostitute.
The film is insightful, it is witty and ironic.
Witty in the description, what could happen if psychoanalysis became popular in Tunisia?
Ironic in the exposing of a tragic/funny bureaucracy. Selma is requesting permits in the office, she is alone with the employee. The office worker is funny, promises, emphasizes the odd obstacles and try to sell underwear and scarves or even shelling peas for dinner.
The colours are Arabic. The light is bright, warm, with places rich of illumination.
The streets are full of people, busy, cheerful, angry. They speak a lot and loudly.
The allegory is in the theme of change, still not easy in Tunisia. In the country, external powers intrude into political life, like the Parisian Selma intents to sneak with Sigmund Freud. A conservative society, a population subjugated by rigid constraints. Tunis is undoubtedly different. The audacious experiment of psychoanalysis, in the Tunisian traditional countryside, could have unpleasant consequences.
A formal, elegant, even surreal direction, with innumerable excessive situations, affected but nice and true characters. Only Selma maintains a detachment of supremacy.
Freud's photo hangs in the studio but is always lopsided. In the end, Selma straightens Freud's portrait definitively: a good omen for Tunisia.
Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism, Harmakis Edizioni
https://en.qantara.de/content/islam-and-psychoanalysis-a-tale-of-mutual-ignorance
https://womenandhollywood.com/venice-2019-women-directors-meet-manele-labidi-arab-blues/
https://womenandhollywood.com/venice-2019-women-directors-meet-manele-labidi-arab-blues/
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