Running time: 91 mins

Arabic with English subtitles

France/Tunisia | 2002 | 35mm
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Sound: Dolby SRD

A film by Raja Amari

Lilia - Hiam Abbass
Salma - Hend El Fahem
Chokri - Maher Kamoun
Folla - Monia Hichri
The neighbor - Faouzia Badr
Hela - Nadra Lamloum
The boss - Abou Moez El Fazaa
Béchir - Salah Miled

Written and Directed by Raja Amari
Cinematographer - Diane Baratier
Sound - Frédéric De Ravignan
Set Designer - Kaïs Rostom
Editor - Pauline Dairou
1st Assistant Director - Pamela Varela
Script - Saïda Ben Mahmoud
Sound Editor - Thomas Robert
Sound Mixer - Cyril Holtz
Costume Designer - Magdalena Garcia Caniz
Make-up and Hair - Hajer Bouhaouala
Original Music - Nawfel El Manaa

Produced by ADR PRODUCTIONS (Alain Rozanes & Pascal Verroust), NOMADIS IMAGES (Dora Bouchoucha Fourati), Arte France Cinéma, l'Agence Nationale de Promotion de l'Audiovisuel-Tunisie (A.N.P.A).
With the participation of Canal Plus, Ministère de la Culture Tunisien. With the support of Fonds Francophone de Production Audiovisuelle du Sud (agence intergouvernementale de la Francophonie and CIRTEF),
Centre National de la Cinématographie and Ministère des Affaires Etrangères, Fondation Gan pour le Cinéma, Procirep and Femis.

A widowed Tunisian seamstress takes an unlikely journey of self-discovery in writer- director Raja Amari's sumptuous and sensual SATIN ROUGE. While investigating a suspected liaison between her headstrong teenaged daughter and a cabaret musician, young widow Lilia becomes drawn to an exotic nightclub netherworld of Rubénesque belly dancers and nocturnal pleasure- seekers. She strikes up a friendship with one of the dancers, then eventually takes the stage herself-quickly becoming the favorite of both cabaret patrons and the club's hot-blooded drummer. As she gradually sheds her shapeless, matronly housedresses for the flamboyantly sequined bar-girl garb, she also begins to emerge from her cocoon of melancholy and loneliness. Variety critic David Stratton compares Amari's tale to Douglas Sirk's American suburban melodramas of the 1950s (particularly ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS) calling the film a "handsomely produced and exhilarating romantic drama."

Official Selection, Berlin Film Festival

"Sensual Performances, excellent acting and the great Arabic music only add to the film's garden of earthly delights." - Flaunt Magazine

Satin Rouge website

In this very impressive film from Tunisia, Lilia is a still-attractive woman with a teenage daughter, Salma. Lilia lives a rather sad existence, obsessively cleaning her house, watching television, and eating alone while Salma hangs out with friends. When Lilia goes to check out the place where Salma goes to dancing class she suspects - rightly - that her daughter is involved with a musician. But it's Lilia whose life is changed by her contacts with a world she knows nothing about - a world of nightclubs where belly dancers perform. The director of Satin Rouge, Raja Amari, is thirty and she follows in the footsteps of her compatriot Moufida Tlatli in exploring the sexual roles women play in Tunisia. The spirit of Douglas Sirk and his 1955 film All That Heaven Allows hovers over this story of a lonely woman who finds an unexpected, unorthodox and exhilirating way to dispel her loneliness, and Hiam Abass is superb as the woman in question.

Reviewed by David Stratton

SBS Movieshow review