Worth: $16.00
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Cast:
Sami Bouajila, Najla Ben Abdallah, Youssef Khemiri, Noomen Hamda, Slah Msaddak
Intro:
… a fascinating descent into a very dark and complex web of moral and ethical decisions.
It’s September 2011, just following the Tunisian revolution. Fares Ben Youssef (Sami Bouajila), his wife Meriem (Najla Ben Abdallah) and their 11-year-old boy Aziz (Youssef Khemiri) are driving south to Tataouine for an impromptu break.
Youssef and Meriem are an affluent upper middle-class couple, both work in well-paid professional careers. They are almost the stereotypical ‘happy family’ and indulge in a family singalong to a pop tune as they cruise along a lonely desert road. Suddenly, as Fares rounds a corner, they’re caught in an ambush with rebel fighters and Aziz is shot in the abdomen by a stray bullet.
Fares and Meriem rush to the nearest hospital, drenched in their son’s blood. Aziz is deemed too critical to be moved to a bigger hospital in Tunis after surgeons remove 80% of his liver. The sympathetic Dr. Dhaoui (Noomen Hamda) tries his best to offer the parents something resembling hope, so he orders a battery of tests to screen the parents as viable partial liver donors.
While they wait, the distressed Fares and Meriem stalk the corridors of the hospital, each dealing with their emotions in their own way. When the blood results come in, Dr. Dhaoui speaks to Meriem alone. He’s aware of the sensitivity of his news: her blood type means she can’t donate an organ and Fares, tests reveal, isn’t Aziz’s biological father.
Less a bombshell than her past rearing its ugly head, Meriem preoccupies herself with trying to locate Aziz’s biological father, a lover from over a decade earlier. She also contends with the question of exactly how she’s going to tell her emotionally volatile husband.
Meanwhile, Fares meets the affable Mr. Chokri (Slah Msaddak) outside the hospital, who invites Fares for a casual coffee. During their chat, Mr. Chokri mentions that for a price, he could source a donor liver for Aziz, no questions asked.
It’s here that the film really begins to open out and unspools its plot tendrils into unexpectedly surreal, dark and far-reaching pathways.
Both Fares and Meriem deal with their own moral and emotional crises in different ways, but this is a story about choices and their repercussions, so while Meriem is faced with the results of her past decisions, Fares’ short-sighted choices are made blindly and with little regard for the repercussions.
Mehdi Barsaoui’s nuanced scripting and raw and verite-style direction (aesthetically reminiscent of Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Babel), coupled with the terrifically fraught, complex performances he gets from his co-leads, keep the story from tipping over into anything like soap opera and instead, it’s a fascinating descent into a very dark and complex web of moral and ethical decisions.
Ultimately, it’s something of a dark parable about the human condition and how we are driven to compromise our own values and morals, piece by piece, in the face of trying to save the lives of those we love.
