Modern Tunisian Cinema

The Silences of the Palace (1994)

by Moufida Tlatli

A presentation done by Chokri Amri

and supervised by Professor Nejet
Mchala.
• Introduction
• Moufida Tlatli
• The Silences of the Palace
• Roy Armes’s two keys of understanding the
film
• conclusion
 “Our collective consciousness is indeed marked by a double mutilation, alienation vis-à-vis what is foreign,
and alienation vis-à-vis what is past, the mimicry of modernity and the mimicry of tradition.”
Aziz Krichen (1992)

In his article “Bourguiba’s sons: melancholy manhood in modern Tunisian

cinema”, Nouri Gana pointedly states that
Unlike any other country in the Arab world, not exempting the Egypt of Nasser 1954
or the 1962 Algeria of the revolutionary FLN (National Liberation Front), Tunisia 1956
is the exemplum of a country that wanted to waste no time in rehearsals or gradualism
but was willing to leap briskly into modernity.

This willingness to leap briskly into modernity is perhaps nowhere better

expressed and underpinned than in modern Tunisian cinema. The latter has,
in fact, never failed to unravel the ways in which Tunisian men and women
are stranded in the pull of neopatriarchy while, at the same time, attempting
to break out of its moulds.
Recent films by Moufida Tlatli, Nadia Fares, Ferid Boughedir and
Nouri Bouzid draw a melancholy portrait of manhood and the
effects it had and continue to have on the predicament of
Tunisian women. Then, the challenges of modernity- not to
mention those of women’s rights, and now of the Gay
International and of sexual politics- have cast a grim shadow on
traditional dimensions of manhood, masculinity and sexuality.
A common denominator for Tlatli’s work and for a considerable
number of cinematographic productions is the exposition of a
certain malaise in interpersonal relationships through the
examination of intricate social phenomena with a special focus
on gender issues and generational gaps.
 Moufida Tlatli
Moufida Tlatli is an Arab woman film director who was born in 1947 in Sidi Bou Said,
Tunisia. Described by The Guardian (2001) as “one of a rare breed.”
She Studied at the IDHEC in Paris, graduating in 1968. Until 1972, she worked at ORTF in
Paris as a scriptwriter and director of production. On her return to Tunisia she worked as
editor on many major Arab films of the 1970’s and 1980’s supplying the skills she had
learned in Paris. The experience later turned her into a film-maker. She states:
Traditionally in the Arab film world, a girl works in continuity or is an editor. I had never
thought of making films. I loved editing.” By editing some eighteen feature films between
1974 and 1992, she established herself as one of the Arab world’s leading film editors.
She then made her feature-film debut as a director with The Silences of the Palace (1994)
and received considerable international attention when this very first film won prises at
the Toronto and San Francisco film festivals. Seven years later, she has completed another
film- La saison des Hommes (The season of Men) to successfully extend her reputation as a
rare instance of a strong female voice in Arab cinema.
 The Silences of the Palace
The film considered is said to have been “born out of absolute necessity.”
It is the product of a personal motivation. In it, Tlatli wanted to
“understand the silences which surround us in our everyday life.” This, she
felt, would obtain by looking back in anger to the past in order to “find
the distant causes, the origin” of these silences.
The Silences of the Palace is a “testimony, a cry, a woman’s work for
women whether they are Tunisian or not.”
This being so, Tlatli puts forward the view that women, if they aspire to
freedom, must “change and shake up mentalities.” With a flash of genuis
and reflection, Tlatli hastens to assert that there are no trivial things; but
there are only trivial ways of looking at things. According to her, Arab
women are not oppressed by men. She states: “It is women who
perpetuate the tradition. The decrees are there, the laws are there, but
women did not immediately assimilate the possibilities.”
 What is remarkable about the film is that it rightly refuses to depict
women as passive and helpless victims.
The Silences of the Palace revolves around the twenty-five-year-old Alia
in her recollections of her upbringing in the bey’s palace where her
mother was a servant in the 1950’s.
It is, indeed, so complex a film in the sense that it never flinshes from
dealing with the most controversial subjects- Divorce, abortion, virginity-
alongside with the complexities of a society committed to change while
at the same time resisting that change. Tlatli’s story, The Guardian
explains, fllows the classic pattern of a generation offered freedom,
seizing it, but slow to grasp that parents might be entitled to a share in
this release. The problem is compounded by the older generation being
psuchologically incapable of changing their traditional ways.
 In Postcolonial Images, studies in North African Film, Roy Armes
states that there are two keys to an understanding of how Silences
of the Palace works; The first is the concept of melodrama and the
second is the spatial organization of the dramatic action.
Melodrama is about playing with temporality and audience
expectation. The importance of music throughout the film, the
sudden and unexpected appearance of Khedija as an oriental
dancer, the sudden shifts of mood, the explicit threat from upstairs
to Alia’s virginity as a constant source of anexiety for the audience,
the coincidence of Alia’s revolt and her mother Khedija’s death
from a failed abortion attempt which forms the film’s climax.
 As for the spatial organization of the dramatic action, The silences of the
Palace is a film about past and present:
The Tunisia of the beys and the modern Tunisia of today. Throughout the
film, there is this obvious upstairs/downstairs, rich/poor contrast.
Sidi Ali plays hid lute and takes the chance to flaunt his mistress’s charms
before his guests let alone before his wife (cloistered within stoicism, agony
and helplessness).
Si Bechir looks scholarly and on finding the unconscious Alia he lifts her skirts
to stroke her thigh and, aroused, rapes her mother before her eyes.
The assumption of power is absolute. The servant women mount the stairs
only to offer the services demanded of them, which include sexual services.
The female identity is disregarded from the way Si Bechir rapes his brother’s
mistress and openly contemplates using the daughter. Nothing is said or done
to prevent it.
 Khalti Hadda, the old housekeeper, tells Alia at the end of the film, “We
were taught one rule in the palace: Silence.”
Space is also divided between inside and out. Against the open, attractive,
and often empty space of the gardens (pertaining very much to the beys)
is set this enclosed world of the kitchen.
Tlatli describes this enclosed world of the kitchen as “the living heart of
the film.” Therefore, it merits our attention so as to see why.
The way the kitchen scenes are shaped sets the pattern for the film’s
treatment of the women’s work.
The Palace is a prison. This is ultimately felt when, in a long shot, Alia runs
desperately forward toward the open gateway, which slowly closes to
imprison her within its grounds, the force of the image being enhanced by
the fact that though she is screaming in agony, we hear no sound at all.
 Alia manages to free herself from the shackles of the
palace only by her talent (singing), something that
Tlatli seems to espouse and hope to see embodied in
women.
Her (Alia) singing leads her to establish a relationship
with Lotfi who accosts her in these significant words:
“You’re as indecisive as our country. One word thrills
you, the next scares you. Things are going to change. A
new future awaits us. You will be a great singer. Your
voice will enchant everyone.”
 But there is a sense in which we believe that Alia has not done more
than what her mother did. By following her mother’s steps, she runs
the risk of making no considerable difference.
Ultimately then are we to conclude with the fact that The Silences of
the palace brings together the passing of the beys and the death of
Khadija, the freeing of Alia, and the independence of Tunisia. It is a
complex work, where the 1950’s struggle for national independence
runs parallel to the predicament of the women in the household of a
bey; At one point in the film, the men complain of a French curfew, but
the women declare it makes little difference to them- their life is a
permanent curfew. Alia is the hope and quest for a way out but not in
any way the ultimate change. Here there is only a suggestion of change.