Tunisia has undeniably made strides in advancing women’s rights, yet patriarchy still defines the relationships between men and women across the Arab world, both in the street and in courts of law. Its moral and philosophical complexity aside, there is, admittedly, a primal enjoyment in seeing Nada tearing her male victims apart. Killing is soon transformed from a self-validating act for enacting justice into a mechanical obsession: a fixation that grows into her main raison d'être. The monochrome cinematography augments Nada’s growing detachment from her petty prey. It similarly offers no easy or straightforward answers, knowing that revenge can never be a panacea. 45 (1981), Black Medusa conversely offers no cathartic charge associated with 1980s exploitation cinema. Inspired by Abel Ferrara’s cult classic, Ms. In contrast to its forebears, Black Medusa eschews psychology, presenting instead an impressionistic portrait of a woman on a quixotic quest to eliminate the fundamental source of violence in her life by using the same method: by reversing the dynamic of power in her favour.
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After all, how can any man capture this full spectrum of trauma? How can any man accentuate the anguish, confusion and loss sexual assault survivors experience?Īrab cinema has no shortage of rape-revenge movies − a sub-genre that flourished particularly in Egypt in the 1980s and early 1990s. Yet in adopting such an elemental narrative, ismaël and Chebbi have succeeded where many male directors have failed: presenting an authentic, honest portrait of a raped woman who, in an uncharacteristic deviation from Arab film, refuses to be victimised.
She’s angry, and she wants blood.īlack Medusa may appear simple, bareboned, rather minimal, in its narrative structure. What we know is that she’s been sexually assaulted. Little is revealed about her background little is revealed about the motivations behind the killing spree she embarks on from the very beginning of the film until the end. But these are evanescent moments, unwillingly seeping from the young woman’s carefully self-constructed guise.įor most of the running time, Nada remains a cypher, and not just because she can’t speak. Fleeting pronounced emotions occasionally break its composure: pain endured, savage zest in inflicting pain, and a palpable lack of satisfaction. For most of its 96-minute duration, Nada (Nour Hajri), the deaf, mute protagonist of ismaël and Youssef Chebbi’s Black Medusa, has a blank stare − a blank canvas.
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