Halfaouine

This movie explored the sexual coming of age for a young boy in Tunisia. At the age of twelve Nora is able to move easily between the world of women and that of the men. The women are more at peace with their sexuality then the men, which I thought was unusual but refreshing.  Nora was not allowed to truly explore his sexuality because he had to feign innocents with his mother and he wasn’t allowed to express his desire for women around his father. There were few male role models who expressed their desire for women openly and even fewer who did anything about it. Nora’s desire for women grew more and more each day but he had to hide in the night and undermine his own budding masculinity in order to get a taste of it. In Annie Ernaux’s Simple Passion she writes “these very constraints bred waiting and desire,” Nora’s inability to publically act on his desires made his chance for women that much more intriguing particularly because of the added risk of his father’s disapproval. Nora’s desires grew stronger because he felt inhibited.  Conchita, The Bad Girl, Celestina, and many of the other characters we looked at last semester all had an understanding of desire. The less you can have something the more that you want it.   These women used their desirability in order to gain more control of their relationships. Leading the man on but never giving to much because once their curiosity is satisfied they begin to lose interest.  For Nora he was experiencing a desire in a unique form he knew he could never indulge in the “delights” of many of the women he saw in the bathes, but he began to see the beauty in the human form. The desire he began to feel was  an awakening as opposed to  indulging in a habit like it will become for him upon maturity.