{"id":31625,"date":"2020-02-19T11:32:10","date_gmt":"2020-02-19T10:32:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/leregardlibre.com\/?p=31625"},"modified":"2025-12-04T22:29:11","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T21:29:11","slug":"un-divan-a-tunis-un-cercle-carre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/leregardlibre.com\/en\/cinema\/films\/un-divan-a-tunis-un-cercle-carre\/","title":{"rendered":"\u00abUn divan \u00e0 Tunis\u00bb, a square circle?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cinema Wednesdays - Jonas Follonier<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Selma (Golshifteh Farahani) is a Tunisian-born Parisian in her thirties. After switching her studies from medicine to psychoanalysis, she decides to return to Bled to open a practice. There, many people will want to talk. The schizophrenia of an entire people, torn between French and Arabic, between French and Arab, between Islam and pleasure, will serve as the backdrop to the entire film, like a (slightly too) spun metaphor. Like me, you'll no doubt come away from this film with the memory of a woman as moving as she is charming, with the memory of a stunning cinematographic style, but also with a few disappointments in terms of substance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

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Form saves substance<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

First of all, to start right in the middle of things, the imam who doesn't like \u00abbearded men\u00bb is a facile statement worthy of the most simplistic \u00abno amalgam\u00bb. It's as if the director, Manele Labidi<\/a>, The psychoanalyst, who talks about the problematic aspects of Islam, showing the gap between its norms and the practices of Muslims, found it useful to show that \u00abIslam can still be a religion of peace\u00bb. Also, the psychoanalyst who quickly stumbles upon lunatics when no one but her would have believed it, is a bit thick. In short, it's the viewer who, in turn, no longer believes the story. Fortunately, the film is more to follow in its form than in its story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And there's much to admire here. Quite simply, because the style is free and carries us along at several points in the film. I was particularly struck by a scene in which Selma breaks down on a long road in the Sahara desert with her complicated sister. They wait, and then a wealthy gentleman comes along, stops to look under the hood of the car to see if there's anything he can do, and seeing that it's no use, agrees to act as their cab. Electric guitar chords, a sun at the end of its run and the arid setting evoke for a moment the western genre. But why? Probably just because it's beautiful. And a little unreal. Sad, sublime sequences follow in the stranger's car, where Selma's sister seems to have disappeared.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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