[CRITICAL] THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE PACK

THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE PACK was presented this year at Cannes in the un Certain Regard section, this is the first fiction feature film from the director of tunisian Kaouther Ben Hania known to have produced several documentaries incurred (The Challat of Tunis, The Imams go to school).

In THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE PACK, she retraces the route night-time (almost) real-Mariam, a young tunisian woman sexually assaulted by police officers during a student party.

Mariam is a young and pretty woman, tonight is the evening of the boarding school of girls in which she lives. This evening, Mariam organizes it for months. Her dress is torn, but fortunately she can count on her best friend for him to lend a… preparations can take up with the excitement and the recklessness of girls of their age… It is true that this dress is a little on the light side, a satin dress with a cobalt blue, Mariam cares but she has no choice; and then finally, it goes well tonight… Mariam will not do anything wrong, she will want to dance, laugh and why not to get acquainted with the beautiful Youssef, a revolutionary militant, which she meet the eyes.

While the film is freely inspired by the novel of Meriem Ben Mohamed and Ava Djamshidi ” Guilty of being raped “, Kaouther Ben Hania admits to having originally wanted to fill his film with a tone policy, see militant encircling the plot of THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE PACK from a context of a post arab revolution, in which two characters engage in a quest to seek the rehabilitation of their dignity by opposing the institutional machine and the corruption of authority representatives…

So far, his story of severe social and engaged in the denunciation of the systems of killing freedom, it will never come to veil what was only supposed to be his excuse, but one that eventually sweeps everything on its passage, and burst onto the screen : the tragedy of the violence ordinary women, of the consent (see invitation) about an alleged rape and the minimization of this crime.

The beautiful is a woman , the pack, the corrupt system… An allegory through which Kaouter Ben Hania tells, first and foremost, the story of a woman who claims the right to be free and recognized as a victim of sexual assault while the executioners are on the side of justice.

In addition to its about necessary and its size can no longer be current, the strength of film of THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE PACK is the implementation stage. Kaouther Ben Hania opted for the demanding form of the plan-sequence, it renders his history, in ten fragments in which the camera Steadicam does not get a cut ever. A stroll in the ghost town, the heaviness of the passing seconds and a night in which the beings and the situation is bogged down in a gloom darker and darker… By the way the blue of the dress is adjusted to the infinity, the light of the street lamps on the asphalt, passing by the uniforms of the attendants and police officers up to the color of the wallpaper…A blue wraparound , dark and dreamlike, which is reminiscent of the horror films that inspired the director, as to situate his narrative between the factual reality and the nightmare.

Carried by a duo more convincing than (Mariam El Ferjani , of which this is the first role in a feature film, and Ghanem Zrelli, the figure of the New Wave of tunisian cinema), THE BEAUTIFUL IS THE PACK is a film with strong theme and the about pregnant, including the staging sublime message. Kaouther Ben Hania wanted to talk about humanism, it is committed yet in a story on the range feminist. And if feminism was not only a humanism ?

Sarah Benzazon

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