Most helpful customer reviews
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5.0 out of 5 stars
simple manifestation of an inner landscape, Jul 15 2004
We begin the film following a beautiful widower in her apartment and community. She has a daughter whom she loves and cares for very much, but for her life does not stop because you are a mother. The protagonist, Lilia is a simple yet complex woman, who is not satisfied with the banalities of everyday life. We see her thinking and wondering all the time. She struggles between balancing her life as a mother, the need to express her femininity and to fulfill her desires.
Magically like we say in the Bled, the "Maktoub" leads her to Belly Dancing. Finaly,it is through that art form that our heroine finds her medium to self-understanding and freedom.
Although the film is about a North African woman Tunisian specifically, the theme is a universal one.
So to all the nomads on the journey, go out there and find your "Sating Rouge"
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4.0 out of 5 stars
some things I just felt like saying about "Satin", April 28 2004
By A Customer
Lilia, a widowed mother, endures a painfully lonely and boring life in modern-day Tunisia. Her empty existence (punctuated by infrequent visits from extended family members, and nearly as infrequent interludes with her daughter, Salmah) involves little more than keeping her apartment neat and tidy - you'd almost think she were a ghost who'd forgotten she was no longer alive. That is...until the sounds of her TV and her busy city are suddenly drowned out by an Arabic song - an Arabic crooner, some chords of an oud and the beat of a drum - and Lilia gives briefly herself to the music. Mostly, Lilia worries about Salmah - a blossoming young woman whom Lilia realizes is hiding something. At first thinking the secret is a new boyfriend, Lilia finds Salmah in bellydancing classes, and begins to think that the secret is not a new boyfriend (like the admirer who plays Darabouka in Salmah's classes) but a new job working the floors of some seedy cabaret. In search of Salmah, Lilia sneaks into the nearest smoke-filled cabaret, finding, not Salmah nor any of the younger girls with whom Salmah shared her time or her dancing. Over-glammed up, with costumes to match, the dancers of "Satin Rouge" are more like glamorous variations on Lilia - Past their prime, older than they could be and still hope to turn their art into stardom. They will never be confused with those dancers made famous in decades of Arabic movies - but once on the floor, the Women of "Satin Rouge" make up for it on gallons of unleaded oomph - following the darabouka beat (played by the same boy who sets the rhythm at Salmah's classes and, ironically enough really is her boyfriend). Immediately befriended by the other dancers, Lilia remains aloof at first, but also entranced, following a path guaranteed to bring her to the floor as the new star. At first volunteering to sew costumes for other dancers, she's caught by her new friends trying one of them on - giving her friends all the excuse they need to "unveil" her to their world. In a sensual surprise, Lilia can move, but does so artlessly (the gruff boss says she has movement, but no art). Still, in the smoky backroom that is the cabaret, she proves popular enough to be kept on until she can refine her foot & hip work. Forgetting most of her worries about Salmah (now that she has a secret of her own) Lilia begins a double life - housewife by day, cabaret star at night. In the movie's running joke, Lilia assumes the existence she had imagined for Salmah, yet continues to chide the younger girl for coming home way after midnight - Salmah having no idea that her mother had only returned a short time earlier. As the story progresses, Lilia will blossom and find a way to enjoy her life.To get the most of "Satin Rouge", you must remember what the movie is not - it's not meant to judge Lilia as much as mark how she changes. "Satin" says little about women in the near-east (filmed in liberal Tunis, the movie shows us openly affectionate and un-veiled women walking the streets of their city, sometimes alone or at night - Kabul it's not). Though Lilia's life is clearly unfulfilled, little in the script clarifies the comparative strength of men, since there are so few male characters, and few really do anything that really drives the story. Though focused on bellydancers, "Satin" doesn't judge or clarify what the dance really means - fitting neither Hollywood's ideal (in which gauzy-dressed girls danced for men) nor the neo-feminist perspective (which - despite glittery and revealing costumes, unabashedly sensual movements and the secondary status endured by women in those countries identified with the dance - still views the dance as an art form and entertainment for women that empowers them and traces its origins to cultures dominated by them). While "Satin" says little about the cultural merits of the east and west, it does get its point across - contrasting the misery Lilia endures while a western-style TV soap opera blares through her apartment, against the liberated passions she feels whenever a song with a good beat comes over the radio. Lilia enjoys the dance because it is the only thing she can do that people seem to enjoy (her dancing friends aside everybody hates her sewing, and nobody's interested in her cooking). Nor is "Satin" about how beautiful you can become when you pull yourself out of your shell - played by Hiam Abbas, Lilia is at least as attractive as her new friends at the outset (if plainly so). When first entering the cabaret - still very much the cloistered and house-dressed widow approaching mid-age - the men swarm over her, undistracted by the performing dancers. "Satin" is best viewed as the story of a woman who already has power and beauty, but seems lost to the world until she finds the right beat.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
"awesome", "awesome" ,"awesome"!!, Mar 6 2004
"Great movie", though it goes against what I strive to educate my dance students on the ethics of Belly Dance and how it is not intended to be performed souly for a mans pleasure. It does speak to many women striving to overcome their cacoon of melancholy and hidden passions. Believe me ladies, this one will make you want to dance and appreciate your body as it is! This movie was enspiring and did not stereotype what a Belly dancer should look like, the music will move you and the story is spirited.
Bahijha
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