Sensuous cinema from Tunisia's Moufida Tlatli, whose The Silences Of
The Palace was one of the films of the 1990s. The Season Of Men is set on a
island populated almost entirely by women, waiting for their husbands
to return from the cities where they work most of the year. The annual
'season of men' - when they return, and try desperately to conceive
children with these alienated, abandoned wives - becomes a source of
increasing tension and sexual dysfunction. As in her debut, Tlatli
conveys all this through minute glances and gestures, effortlessly
cutting across past and present, cause and effect. Subtle,
under-stated, satisfying film-making.
