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.
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