THE STORY – Aya, in her late twenties, feels trapped in her life with her parents in southern Tunisia, seeing no prospects for change. One day, the minivan she uses for her daily commute crashes, leaving her as the sole survivor. Realizing that this could be her chance for a fresh start, she flees to Tunis under a new identity, but everything is soon jeopardized when she becomes the main witness to a police blunder.
THE CAST – Fatma Sfar, Nidhal Saadi, Yasmine Dimassi & Hela Ayed
THE TEAM – Mehdi Barsaoui (Director/Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 123 Minutes
In the Tunisia-set gem “Aïcha,” director Mehdi Barsaoui ponders the question of freedom – specifically, where it can come from when the patriarchy and structures of society are constructed in a way that keeps you from liberation. In Barsaoui’s “Aïcha,” freedom occurs only after death.
29-year-old Aya (an electrifying Fatma Sfar) is stuck in her small village of Tozeur, in a relationship with a married man who continues to say he’ll leave his wife soon; in a hotel job whose rich guests offer pittance for their attitude while stuffing their faces with lobster while Aya eats leftover stew; and in her parents home, where she pays their bills while they attempt to ‘sell’ her hand in marriage and deride her for spending a measly four dinaris on a charity shop jacket. But Aya is soon offered a chance at a new life by an unlucky roll of luck, as the vehicle she is in while on her way to work crashes. Aya escapes before the van explodes, and the hitchhiker they’d picked up is misidentified as Aya. Suddenly, an escape to a new life has opened up for her. The insurance money rescues her family from debt, while the theft of money from her slimeball never-leaving-his-wife manager can never be traced back to her.
Donning a burka to mask her identity – in the process reframing the garment to be empowering rather than oppressive – she attends her own funeral before taking a bus to the capital, Tunis. Once there, the mistreated hotel worker spends a night in a hotel, her excited liberation at paying 720 dinaris and tipping another 20, a delight to witness. However, without any form of identity, she struggles to find a home that doesn’t want to do a credit check or signed notarization. Taking on a new name, she avoids all of this by paying six months’ rent up front to a bougie, nightclub-going student Lobna (Yasmine Dimassi).
Her new life appears to be going smoothly as she makes friends with a baker nearby and begins visiting nightclubs with Lobna and her well-off friends, rogue men who seem to demand her attention. When one of these men gets jealous of Aya, attracting attention from another man and performing a criminal act, Aya soon realizes that although she may be free of the vacuum of life she was stuck in, she remains stuck in the societal structures of Tunisia and the patriarchy. This crime is investigated by charming detective Farés (Nidhal Saadi), who has his own issues with the system after the death of his brother. With this, Barsaoui parses across another theme of figurative imprisonment, as his boss – who is only a few years away from retiring – tries desperately to avoid what could be a scandal and cost them all their jobs.
There is too much going on in “Aïcha,” but Barsaoui manages to thread it all together by the end in ways that leave you feeling extremely emotionally satisfied for Aya, if also quite drained. But the result of that emotional catharsis is something slightly disingenuous. The more joyful climax feels too neat and idealistic to really hit home the issues within Tunisian societal structures that the film portrays. The narrative around police corruption doesn’t engage with much more than superficial concepts – even if Farés gets a plot line around deliberately missing information post-Covid – and the more hegemonic concept with Lobna’s interactions with the abusive men trails away too little. And yet, Barsaoui captures these elements of Tunisian life in ways that enable audiences unfamiliar with the culture to follow and empathize. The idea that we are all trapped by corruption, capitalism, and the patriarchy is not a notion that only affects Tunisia.
Barsaoui’s direction here is subtly staggering; the crash feels like it comes out of nowhere, like a jolt of lightning giving life to a new version of a human being. A nightclub sequence on drugs, where Aya ends up seeing a bloody corpse dancing to house music, is particularly entrancing. But, what his best quality as a director appears to be is his understanding of just how incredible Sfar is, as he lets his camera peer endlessly at her transfixing face, which manages to say everything with minimal exposition. It is an astonishing performance of pain and joy, where the constricting elements of her new freedom are felt in every smile, yell, and cry.
Film festivals are places that often unearth gems. With its fascinating commentary on Tunisian power structures, both of society and of the police, “Aïcha” is the hidden gem of Venice. It’s an exciting character study that shows how women, even in death, are the currency of men and government, no matter their supposed freedom.
