It's Cinefan time again and I kicked off my film watching spree with an accidental choice. I reached two hours before the time for the film that I wanted to see and ended up viewing a Tunisian film called Tender Is The Wolf. What unfolded in the first few minutes of the film showed great promise but somehow failed to deliver. The story is set in some nameless city and shows the harsh realism of modern Tunisian life. There’s this woman who is getting ready for an evening on the town in a red dress. It fits like a dream.
That evening we see three young men fight for some dudes take off with the stuff one of them sold on the street. They are pissed and one of them is an albino who keeps dancing for no reason and when he has a reason, he dances then as well. One more guy, in his 30’s stays with his over protective mother and over bearing father, joins the three.
As the four dudes sit and drink and smoke up, the woman in the red dress comes from her flat to hitch the cab that has been sent by her date for the evening. One of them men makes fun of her and the fiery woman in that figure hugging fiery dress retorts. The men are pissed, the albino decides to teach her a lesson and the three gang rape her. The fourth dude, actually an over grown kid, tries stopping but fails. The woman is pissed at them for they have spoilt her dress. It’s a nightmare.
That evening we see three young men fight for some dudes take off with the stuff one of them sold on the street. They are pissed and one of them is an albino who keeps dancing for no reason and when he has a reason, he dances then as well. One more guy, in his 30’s stays with his over protective mother and over bearing father, joins the three.
As the four dudes sit and drink and smoke up, the woman in the red dress comes from her flat to hitch the cab that has been sent by her date for the evening. One of them men makes fun of her and the fiery woman in that figure hugging fiery dress retorts. The men are pissed, the albino decides to teach her a lesson and the three gang rape her. The fourth dude, actually an over grown kid, tries stopping but fails. The woman is pissed at them for they have spoilt her dress. It’s a nightmare.
The girl asks her brother to get even and he bashes up the only guy who d
idn't do anything. The girl doesn't stop her brother and enjoys it. He is left to die butt naked on the streets but somehow manages to get home and get dressed to go out, find his friends and search the girl to teach her a lesson. The girl and the guy hook up, end up making love and discovering true love. The man proposes and the woman accepts even though she is sure that he'll walk out on her; the man assures her that he'll not for he's learnt a lot in the course of that one night.Come morning and the woman walks out on the man and he is left licking his wounds. The build up of these two lead characters- Abdelmoumen Chouiette as the over grown kid and a beautiful looking Anissa Daoud as the woman in red- as two sides of the same coin worked for the few minutes but just looses it in between. The setting of the film is very realistic and gritty but it doesn't really take off. There are few shots which are in black and white, can’t figure out why? Barring a few sequences that stay in the mind for some time, it’s the lead wolves (didn’t know who was the real ‘wolf’ in the title) that stand out in the film. At 83 minutes director Jilani Saadi's vision felt a little long or have I gotten so used to non-sense that perhaps I'm not being able to see the good in it? That's my problem with these slice of life kind of films- there has to be a little something more that just a juicy looking chunk of meat.
Image Courtsey: Philadelphia Film Fest
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