When the Child is Born a Hermaphrodite
When the Child is Born a Hermaphrodite. In this Tunisian entry, written and directed by Abdelhamid Bochnak, the joy of a new born son soon turns to confusion, unhappiness and anger. Ruggero Calich praises the director for addressing the issue in detail, and also for offering an accurate social analysis by reviewing one by one the sexual identity clichés in a Muslim land.
Mariem and Muhammad Ali, a married couple who have been trying to have a child for four years, finally receive the good news. At the doctor’s office Muhammad gets especially emotional; he cannot hold back his tears with the joy of finally becoming a father. He immediately grabs his phone to inform his father; the news that the child would be a boy made Muhammad particularly happy.
But when in the scan the male organ was previously noticed, they all were too much in a hurry to determine the gender of the baby; in reality Mariem was expecting a hermaphrodite!
Muhammad’s world literally collapses around him, and at first Mariem is also shaken. The harmony in their marriage is disrupted; Muhammad’s biggest fear is that others might learn about it and he needs to hide the complicated situation even from his father and mother…
The Tunisian film The Needle (L’aiguille), written and directed by Abdelhamid Bochnak, addresses the issue in detail and offers an accurate social analysis by reviewing one by one the sexual identity clichés in a Muslim land.
This fiction film manages to keep the audience on their toes for almost two hours. The script, which deals with the subject as if it has full expertise in this subject, cunningly exhibits masculine clichés and reminds us that it is high time to destroy taboos.
In one of the first scenes of the film, shot in a coffee shop, Muhammad Ali who soon will become a father, says albeit jokingly to a male friend: “Real men make boys.” The fact that the coffee shop owner is a homosexual with a relatively effeminate attitude fuels jokes around sexual identity. The TV repairman, who is struggling with the cafe’s satellite dish, adds fuel to the fire: “I would rather have a beautiful daughter than an effeminate son.” Fortunately, the relatively mindful friend Muhammad was chatting with wraps up: “So, because I have a daughter, am I not a man?”
Apparently, Muhammad had problems about his own masculinity. His life turns into a nightmare due to the stress of what others will say about the child’s gender, rather than thinking about the child’s future.
The very appropriate selection of the actor for the role, which matches Bilel Slatnia’s big boy image, subtly makes us feel that there may have been a homosexual experience or even harassment in Muhammad’s past.
Besides, Fatma Sfar, in the role of Mariem seems to have overcome the difficulties of being an orphan, and physically resembles Sibel Kekilli, and also Maria Callas; so this can possibly give us enough clues about what such a strong character can achieve.
The performances of Sabah Bouzouita, who plays Muhammad’s mother, and Jamel Madani interpreting his father, properly reflect the maturity of the older generations on some serious issues like a hermaphrodite grandchild, despite the retrograde trend gaining power not only in Muslim countries, but also globally.
If you are more or less familiar with the subject, you are likely to enjoy the irony and black humor felt in the film from the very beginning. All that ‘happened’ to Muhammad, who reflects the patriarchal society and can even be considered a victim of the dominant mentality, is exhibited minutely in the film.
Aside from his threats to Mariem, who he says should never talk to anybody about their intersex baby, his hesitance to hold hands with his wife in public and his disapproval of diapers in pink packaging for his child, his petulance, his worries, fears and paranoia are worth seeing.
The potential of Muhammad’s killing the baby in order to radically ‘deal with’ the issue which the director made us feel since the very beginning, also creates the eventual conditions of realisation for Mariem’s prospect of leaving home with the baby and hopefully establishing a new life.
The birth of a hermaphrodite baby turns into a curse for the family and, as unhappiness blends with anger, Fatma Sfar as Mariem does real justice to the character she portrays skilfully.
Despite everything, Mariem, who prefers to be an optimist, exclaims that she can now compensate for her orphan past by uniting forces with her child and makes us all believe in the strength of a brave woman’s ability to stand on her own feet and maybe leave her husband, despite the rules of a conservative society.
For some, this humble work of cinema may be seen too didactic, perhaps blended with the aesthetics of a television drama. There may even be people who want to consider the film a social service ad commissioned by any Ministry of Health, and after it’s screening to possibly organize a round table session with social and medical experts on the subject.
However, it is certain that this significant production coming out of Tunisia, a land where long-acquired freedoms are nowadays visibly restricted, has succeeded in its mission to at least compare the problematic issue with its counterparts in the Christian Western world. Moreover, we can consider the fact that Muhammad’s father goes to a religious leader of the community, to ask his advice, as a sign of the ongoing fervent faith in Islam.
Is it an overly optimistic perspective for the imam to oppose the emergency gender determination surgery, which from the very beginning Muhammad was in favor of and to defend the right of every individual to personally determine their own gender when they come of age? After all, the respectable religious figure accepts humbly that he found no information about hermaphrodite babies in religious texts.
You are not wrong to be curious about the surprising outcome of director Abdelhamid Boshnak’s fluctuating and heart-stopping script…
Ruggero Calich
Edited by Steven Yates
© FIPRESCI 2024