Tunisian Nights

This week I watched the movie, which among its other highlights features this priceless blurb on the DVD cover:

"A Tunisian answer to DIRTY DANCING!"
— Stephen Holden, THE NEW YORK TIMES

I wasn't aware that Dirty Dancing had particularly addressed a question to Tunisia, but evidently Satin Rouge is the first and foremost response.

The IMDB summary contains a nice whilst:

After the death of her husband, Lilia's life revolves solely around her teenage daughter, Salma. Whilst looking for Salma late one night, Lilia stumbles upon a belly dance cabaret and though initially reserved and taken aback by the culture of the place, Lilia gets consistently drawn back to it. She befriends one of the belly dancers and is encouraged into dancing for the audience. Lilia also starts a romance with one of the cabaret's musicians, who unbeknown to both of them, is also romancing Salma.

I haven't seen Dirty Dancing so I can't tell whether Satin Rouge covers all the bases. It's definitely more risque/rebellious than, say, Strictly Ballroom. And the mother-daughter romance twist, especially at the end, felt a little like a French version of Monsoon Wedding: beautiful, witty, but more than a little creepy.

From director Raja Amari's bio info, I glean that she studied belly dancing at Tunis's top conservatory, but had never witnessed it in the cabaret context till she started work on Satin Rouge. So the forbidden aspect was not the type of dance, but the venue, which I found interesting.

I'll also note that it's the sole Tunisian film that my library system has, excluding stuff like Patton or Humphrey Bogart's 1943 vehicle (literally—it's a tank!) Sahara.