Essays

Ktzia Alon on "Tangerine"

The sensual and fascinating film of German director Irene von Alberti, Tangerine, opens with an enigmatic scene of a women triangle: A foreign Western woman knocks on the door of a local Moroccan one. From their brief interaction it is clear that they already know each other, and the relationship between the two is obviously tense. An older Moroccan woman, seen before cooking and singing to herself in the kitchen, enters the frame. The tense dialogue between the women continues. Who are they for each other? Are they related in some way? What is happening here? The non-standard answers are revealed to our eyes in the end of the short exposition, when they throw at each other: “you don’t understand anything”, and in response – “neither do you”. They are both right. At this point the film starts telling the story that happened three months before, while trying to provide us with the point of view of both women, who allegorically embody two completely different realities of life, at the same time. We, as viewers, are required to understand the contradictory perspectives between which the film moves – that of “the West” and that of “the others”. In this sense, the film joins other films which deal with the post-colonial state, such as Michael Haneke’s French film Hidden and the films of Turkish-German director Fatih Akin (Head On, The Edge of Heaven). The uniqueness of the film is in the nonconformist gender split it offers inside the blended space of Morocco, which exists alongside, under and against western influences.

During the film, we spectators become witnesses of the clash between completely different perceptions of concepts such as friendship, sisterhood, intimacy, lie, betrayal and the main question of the film: What is prostitution? Our determined views are suddenly shown in a relativist light and we are forced to recognize that our accepted norms were actually set by the strong, the powerful, the Western, white males.

Pia and Tom, a German couple with relationship problems, travel to Morocco due to Tom’s search of music (the film gently references Wim Wenders’s Buena Vista Social Club and the following film by Fatih Akin, Crossing the Bridge, that bring “other” music, be it Cuban or Turkish, to “the West”).

Amira is a talented young Moroccan adolescent, whose parents emigrated from Morocco and left her with her violent and conservative uncle, who utterly refuses her occupation as a night club and video clip dancer. She sees the relation with the German couple as her way out. However, before her passion leads her to the West, to economic stability and freedom of thought, her Moroccan friend teaches her a lesson about emotional sobriety, avoiding exploitation on one hand and gaining profits from the situation on the other. Did we mention prostitution? It is all in the eyes of the beholder. Amira learns to be conscious of her image in the other’s eyes, and the image of Scheherazade comes up as a visual and emotional icon projected on her relationship with Tom. The role of the modern Persian Shah is played nowadays by the Western man for homeless, depressed and poor Moroccan girls. The unconscious internalization of the patriarch concepts by the seemingly “liberated” Amira is shown in a heartbreaking scene where she asks Pia if Tom hit her. Pia’s face conveys turbulence from the mere asking of the question. Life under impossible conditions and the battle for self constitution of females in Morocco of our days are exposed in the film with full intensity. At the same time, the film succeeds in showing a variety of strong women that call for high identification, and in presenting the overlapping and conflictual points between Eastern and Western feminism.

Dr. Ktzia Alon is the head of the Gender Studies Program at Beit Berl (founded by Dr. Vicky Shiran)