Bik Eneich - Un Fils - A son Directed by Mehdi Barsaoui
Bik Eneich - Un Fils - A son
Directed by Mehdi Barsaoui
Starring: Sami Bouajila, Najla Ben Abdallah
Origin: Tunisia, France, Lebanon, Qatar
Year 2019
Review author: Roberto Matteucci
Click Here for Italian Version
"Here is the liver."
It is a dramatic world when a disease arrives in a family. Life starts to have a different vision, destroying normal daily, both for the sick person and for who is well. For instance, the problem of transplants, with the urgency of finding a donor, of finding a body.
The shortage of donors has been also widespread in past ages.
"The idea of organ scarcity also has historical antecedents in the perennial difficulty of finding human bodies and body parts for autopsies, medical studies and experiments."
...
In Europe, between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, the corpses of prisoners sent to the gallows were offered to barbers and surgeons who could dispose as they liked.
The request for “criminal bodies” was, as nowadays, just for medical and "scientific" reasons. In Brazil and France (Laqueur 1983) at the dawn of the modern age, the poor did not have any autonomy at the moment of death and their bodies could be confiscated from elderly care houses and hospices and sold to hospitals and medical students." (1)
In present-day in Tunisia, what difficulties have who needs organ transplant?
Religious limitations are minimal; Surah 5 Verse 32 of the Koran:
"… and if any one saved a life. It would be as if he saved the life of the whole people".
The confirmation is on the site http://www.transweb.org/faq/q18.shtml:
“The religion of Islam strongly believes in the principle of saving human lives. According to A. Sachedina in his Transplantation Proceedings' article, Islamic Views on Organ Transplantation, "the majority of the Muslim scholars belonging to various schools of Islamic law have invoked the principle of priority of saving human life and have permitted the organ transplant as a necessity to procure that noble end."
However, the precepts clash with ancient traditions. Tunisian director Mehdi Barsaoui narrates about an arduous transplant, with tormented private contrasts, such as adultery in an Islamic nation, in the film Bik Eneich - Un Fils - A son presented at the 76th Venice Film Festival.
It is 24 September 2011, in Tunisia. The Arab revolution has ended. For some months, President Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali has been in exile in Saudi Arabia, after twenty-three years of power. With the ouster of Ben Ali, the situation got worse. The economy regressed, tensions increased, the secularism of the state disappeared, and Tunisia became the battlefield of other countries and other interests. Terrorism found fertile ground.
Fares and Meriem are travelling by car for a short holiday in Tataouine in southern of Tunis. With them is Aziz, the ten-year-old son. Suddenly, a shooting begins between army and terrorists. Aziz is seriously injured. He is transported to the hospital. The diagnosis is ruthless: transplantation of part of the liver must be soon.
But the organs available are littlel, the waiting list is long, and Aziz has short time, if he were not operated quickly, he would die.
The parental compatibility test has an unexpected result: Fares is not the father. The couple already annihilated by sadness, must collide in a dark relational crisis.
The themes of the story are many: political, religious, the Arab revolution, the war in Libya, terrorism. Intimate and private ones overlap, such as the donation and the trade of organs, betrayal, jealousy, fear, pain.
The director talks about Bik Eneich - Un Fils - A son:
“It’s an incredibly progressive and courageous film which touches upon taboo subjects, such as adultery.These are questions that are very close to my heart. I yearn for a modern society where men and women are perfectly free and equal, and not just on paper. Whether we want it in Tunisia or not, equality between men and women is yet to become a reality.
Tunisia was the first Arab country to abolish slavery, to give women the right to vote, to have organised free elections, not to mention the rights accorded to women by Bourguiba. But Tunisian society can be very reactionary, with laws which obliterate freedom, such as the law on adultery. Adulterous couples are jailed for 5 years once the adultery has been confirmed. It’s not even possible for them to appeal their sentence.
We’re working from within a wholly patriarchal society, where fathers are automatically named the legal guardians of their children.
The film also explores the topic of organ donation, a controversial subject...Organ donations do take place in Tunisia, but it’s still a culturally taboo subject for religious reasons: for Muslims, the integrity of the body is essential.” (2)
The distress of the parents is emblematically exposed in this sequence.
Medium-shot. Hospital waiting room. The colours are white and blue, but opaque. Meriem walks nervously, the camera follows her gently. The sounds are her sighs and the usual noises of the clinic. She is going towards the wall, and Fares is leaning against a column. He is shocked.
Behind the door emerge some white coats, the woman turns, shakes him, both approach him, they are filmed from the back. Cut.
Close-up of Meriem. The doctor passes in front of the camera, hiding her before stopping. He is the pivot of the image, he is explaining the need for the operation. Cut.
The frame included the faces of the couple and the back of the head of the doctor. The camera moves slowly.
The association is obvious, the medicine, the son's wound is dividing Fares and Meriem both for the grief and for the fighting between them. The loudspeaker calls him and, without waiting for their answer, he leaves. Therefore, now husband and wife no longer have obstacles between them. They phlegmatically turn to observe his steps. The hindrance is gone.
The scene has a hidden meaning. Mehdi Barsaoui takes sides in favour of the woman. Fares and Meriem are different, despite the appearance. They have the same sorrow, but Fares has inner anger while Meriem flaunts a greater sensitivity.
Male chauvinism exists in Tunisia, so the rights of the couple are not equivalent, only the man can choose for the children. Women are a frill.
Fares must tackle the tragedy with concreteness. The author narrates another theme:
“Organ donation is not developed as in other countries, and not for restrictive laws, because it is perfectly allowed by law.
But the Muslim religion provides for the respect of the sacredness of the body and it is against depriving the body of part of the organs because it is necessary to respect the corpse. My opinion is not a criticism, but an invitation to reflect for practitioners of the Muslim religion, which is a religion based on the concept of generosity, and the gift of organs is the peak of generosity, because it can save lives. It is important to overcome this concept of considering a body less pure when it is deprived of an organ." (3)
Bioethical and religious choices are more conservative in Tunisia. Despite years of secularism, daring moral decisions are not easy.
Therefore, the director's irritation towards Fares worsens. He pushes him to make an obnoxious chose, and most importantly, he suggests that the wife would have behaved in discordant ways.
A despicable trafficker persuades Fares to begin a very dangerous journey in Libya. The aim is to buy an abandoned child, to remove his liver for Aziz.
“It showed how children were on the front line, in defence of that palace. Without any sense of humanity, and used as artillery. It was what gave me the idea of developing this theme of organ trafficking, to show how in a country, where everything is collapsing, there is no longer any kind of defence, of respect for human being. The economy is destroyed, everything is possible, even paradoxically it is possible that a child were consider as a supplier of spare parts." (3)
The characters strictly follow these social and human elements.
Fares is the actor Sami Bouajila, already married and in disagreement with his spouse, in the film Les bienheureux. In 2000, he played the young Felix, looking for unusual emotions in Drôle de Félix.
Fares is falsely modern and secular - "do you pretend to be a progressive?" - while he shows his machismo and class superiority. He is a member of a wealthy bourgeoisie in Tunisia and can sadistically buy a little boy.
Meriem is falsely weak. She is a liar. She had no qualms about cheating on her husband for personal pleasure. She also uses her female supremacy deceptively to pity her old lover and Aziz's real father. She does not care if he has a new family.
The lover, the son, the Libyan orphan and, perhaps, Fares are the victims of an environment with numerous dilemmas. Again, the author explains:
Cineuropa: The film is set in 2011, the year of the Tunisian revolution. How does this film fit into Tunisia’s current political situation?
Mehdi M Barsaoui: I would say that the family portrayed in this film is the mirror image of those you’d find in Tunisia during Ben Ali’s era. The parents are young, rich and good-looking. Their child is well educated. But behind this image of the perfect family there lie unspeakable secrets. I tried to describe the mutilation of the country, and the cultural impact that religion can have on our daily life and on the situation of women. Obviously, I wanted to make a film about the emancipation of women, but I also wanted to explore the emancipation of men. The key message that I wanted to put across is both simple and complicated: as soon as the film’s characters, Fares and Meriem, decide to free themselves from the burden of the past, they are finally able to see one another for who they really are, to talk to one another and to communicate. (2)
The falsity of the happy family is described in the first part, with the outdoor party of some Tunisian bourgeois couples
And, above all, in the scene before the gunfire. The tragedy demonstrates the hypocrisy and disloyalty under the superficial carelessness.
Extreme-long-shot of the desert. A road cuts through the arid landscape. A car appears on the horizon. Cut.
Interior of the car. There are Fares, Meriem and Aziz. Close-up of the son and father. Cut.
Close-up of the mother. A siren in the distance. Cut.
The police quickly overtook them. At the same time, the three cheerfully switch the radio on and start singing Gregorious by Si Lemhaf. The song is rhythmic, cheerful: “Those are not the real words / Dont be a fool”. They dance, laugh, move joyfully. They are carefree, or as Mehdi Barsaoui says: "the perfect family there lie unspeakable secrets."
Happiness and death emerge together.
The language is simple but incisive. Establishing-shot on the roofs of Tataouine, long close-ups, the camera continuously on the characters. During the brutal selection of the Libyan child, the director uses the ground-level-shot on their feet, until the selection.
The details of the pieces of computers, of the files thrown to the floor, reveal the corruption, the decay of a world at war. The editing is clear, or alternate like when Meriem calls the biological father, and, simultaneously, Fares is involved with a filthy organ trafficker while asking for more money.
The scenes are as realistic as the description of the city or the hospital.
The final representations all have the due direction, there is no religiosity and not even a free will, but perhaps, cancelling the falsehood, the misfortune could follow a more just existence.
Franca Porciani, Patrizia Borsellino, Vite a perdere. I nuovi scenari del traffico d’organi. FrancoAngeli, Milano, 2018 (pag. 49) translated by the authour.
https://quinlan.it/2019/09/27/intervista-a-mehdi-m-barsaoui/ translated by the author.
