Stolen Sexuality: “Dunia” Review
- slingshotmagazine
- Feb 4, 2019
- 4 min read
Updated: Mar 9, 2019
by Jekaterina Drozdovica
Rating: ★★★★☆
To celebrate International Women’s Day, we decided to look at an early movie addressing female sexual rights and found the 2005 Egyptian film “Dunia” directed by a Lebanese journalist Jocelyne Saab. The plot follows a young victim of female genital mutilation (FGM) on a journey to explore her sexuality.
“Come on, my pretty, what are you afraid of?” a grandmother asks an eight-year-old Yasmine curled up by the wall in their living room in Cairo. “We’ll remove a small piece of your skin. It will only do you good.” She puts a green blanket on the floor and a white tissue above. As the nurse comes in, the grandmother forces Yasmine on to the tissue. They open the girl’s legs and a double-edged razor blade shines in the nurse’s hands. Yasmine resists, but her grandmother is holding her legs and the upper body. The girl screams breathlessly. The razor makes a sharp noise and the tissue is filled with red.
Yasmine is a secondary character in the 2005 film “Dunia” directed by a Lebanese journalist Jocelyne Saab. Saab sadly passed away in January, but her brave film continues to speak volumes. The scene described above shows female genital mutilation (FGM) – ritual cutting of a clitoris and labia to prevent sexual desire and ensure women’s loyalty. The movie’s protagonist, Dunia, is a belly dancer and a literature undergraduate in Cairo. She writes her thesis on the expressions of sexual pleasure in Arab poetry.
But it’s hard to study something you don’t understand. Her boyfriend, Mamdouh, accuses Dunia of physical coldness. From her secret poems, we discover her mutilation and lack of sexual desire. “I want it, but my body resists,” she says. Instead, Dunia translates her caged sexuality into passionate belly-dance lasting one third of the two-hour-long film. Saab maintains aesthetic harmony and shows body curves without being vulgar. The upbeat Arabic songs entertain and soften the drama. The tension peaks as little Yasmine opens her legs in front of the razor blade.
At least 200 million girls today have survived FGM, often in much worse conditions than Yasmine. Some real-life victims recall lying in a tent with tens other girls all cut by one knife. Some saw their own flesh on the ground. Somalian-born model, Waris Dirie, was three years old when she was mutilated. In the biographical 2009 film “Desert Flower” birds ate her sliced clitoris and labia.
Although Saab’s account of mutilation takes a lighter form, she was among the first to address the taboo subject in cinema. Punished for her bravery Saab received numerous threats for opposing the practice. The Egyptian TV cut funding ten days before shooting. Authorities tried to censor the movie as pornographic and ruined the distribution. “But there is not a [single] Egyptian family that doesn’t have it on a pirated DVD,” Saab said proudly at the Vesoul International Film Festival of Asian Cinema in 2009. Today the DVD is sold on Amazon for 25$.
“Dunia” is a movie about women’s social liberation and we see positive female characters there, such as her two progressive friends – Inayate and Arwe. Inayate is a taxi driver who openly shows sexual appetite, teasing her husband throughout the film. She acts as Yasmine’s mother and opposes mutilation for the girl, though she ultimately fails to protect her. Arwe is a university professor, free-spirited and financially independent. The women meet in the evenings, smoke shisha and share personal struggles.
They are supportive friends, but hardly mentors. Instead, Dunia looks up to blind professor Beshir, her thesis supervisor, oppositional intellectual and handsome brunette. In multiple scenes, the two discuss poetry, love and desire, but it’s mostly Beshir speaking. Saab fails to avoid the fact his paternalistic figure overshadows her main protagonist. Ironically, it seems that Dunia would always be ‘cold’ if not for Beshir’s guidance.
He ignorantly describes sexual pleasure as “the summit of a peak that you only reach with pain and patience.” Well, certainly not the extent of pain Dunia suffered when first having sex. In severe types of mutilation, the whole genitalia are cut and the wound is sewed closed leaving a small hole for urination and periods. Victims suffer from birth complications, chronic infections, urinating problems and excessive bleeding. Saab ignores such details, which might be a plus for the faint-hearted.
But what is the explanation for such cruelty? Mutilation is not a religious requirement. The practise dates back at least 2000 years and there is no single location of origin. Instead, FGM is rooted in gender inequality. Where women are men’s property; they must be loyal and obedient, and sexual pleasure is a privilege not to be afforded. The power of social norms is best shown in the 2004 Senegalese movie “Mooladé” set in a remote village in the west-African country Burkina Faso. An open-minded Collé refuses mutilation for her daughter and helps four girls to escape the ritual. The villagers condemn Collé; her husband whips her publicly to the cheers of the crowd.
In “Dunia”, the story is black and white. Saab fails to portray the stigma leading Yasmine’s grandmother to believe mutilation is beneficial. The same stigma influences diaspora communities in Europe to cut their daughters. In the award-winning 2013 documentary “Bref” Christina Pitouli interviews Spanish immigrants from Africa who voluntarily chose mutilation to secure social status and chances to marry. For them, cutting is a social expectation, like shaving legs or tweezing eyebrows.
In England alone there were 1,030 newly reported cases from January to March 2018. During school summer holidays thousands of migrant families travel to their native countries where mutilation is easier and cheaper. The practise is illegal in the UK, but the lack of evidence makes it hard to prosecute. Last month, history was made when the first ever case of FGM was found guilty in a British court. Yet the girls rarely report their parents; the best way to save them seems to be shifting the social norm.
We need films like “Dunia” to bring awareness and foster change. Saab produced a light movie for those who want to dive into the topic but are afraid of sickening details. Although the underdeveloped plot has some contextual gaps, the movie pleases with symmetry, harmonic colour-range and high-quality aesthetics. Dunia is an essential watch around International Women’s Day to reflect on the importance of female autonomy in building gender equality.
CHECK OUT our picture story about Dunia.
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