Sensing and self: a haptic ‘look’ at the aesthetics of women’s labour in contemporary Maghrebi and Maghrebi-French diasporic cinema

ABSTRACT

This article expands on an ongoing dialogue about representations of female protagonists’ sensual and embodied experiences in Francophone North African cinema scholarship. It examines the dynamic cinematographic styles of contemporary Maghrebi French filmmakers Abdellatif Kechiche, Nadia El Fani, Leila Kilani and Houda Benyamina, asserting that they create a multisensory connection with the viewer that disrupts the underlying unequal power dynamic between film viewer and the Maghrebi woman’s body. This article places labour practices as the loci of analysis, as these examples of quotidian life represent a microcosm of protagonists’ participation in larger social and economic frameworks. First, it looks at the role of embodied labour in strengthening a protagonist’s connection to her community in Kechiche’s La Graine et le mulet/The Secret of the Grain (2007) and El Fani’s Bedwin Hacker (2003). Then, it turns to labour practices in Kilani’s Sur la planche/On the Edge (2011) and Benyamina’s Divines (2016) that isolate and disconnect the protagonist from her community and her body. This article concludes that it is the distinctly multisensory style used by all four directors that centres their protagonists’ physical, lived experiences while challenging the viewer not to merely watch them passively, but to engage in a dynamic, empathetic relationship with the body onscreen.

KEYWORDS:

• Maghrebi
• labour
• Nadia El Fani
• Leila Kilani
• Houda Benyamina
• Abdellatif Kechiche

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Kechiche later released a re-edited version of this scene as a stand-alone short film entitled Sueur, or sweat.

2. As the film continues, this sentence is repeated and translated into other languages, including French.

3. Or ‘pirater’, the French term for hacking that is used throughout the film. This is a fun play on language, considering that ‘to pirate’ in English refers to attacking, stealing or reproducing (someone else’s work) illegally for profit; however, Kalt’s transmissions merely overlay or add to existing programs, stealing nothing and with no harmful intent.

4. In much the same way that Mathieu Kassovitz’s La Haine (‘Hate’) (1995) was inspired by police violence that incited riots in 1993.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Che Sokol

Che Sokol is a PhD Candidate in English and Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill whose research focuses on issues of gender and embodiment in Francophone North African cinema. Che’s dissertation engages with haptic phenomenology and multisensory analysis to examine filmic representations of female Maghrebi French protagonists’ embodied experiences of labour practices.