Whispered Secrets: What Does This Sensitive Berlin Drama’s Title Mean?

What’s It About?

Returning to Tunisia for her uncle’s funeral, Lilia reunites with a family that knows nothing of her life in Paris. Determined to unravel the mystery of his sudden death, Lilia finds herself entangled in the secrets of a household where three generations of women coexist.

Secrets and Lies

In the summer of 2021, Leyla Bouzid made waves at the closing of the Critics’ Week at the Cannes Film Festival with “A Tale of Love and Desire.” This title could very well fit the content of her third feature film, “In a Whisper,” which not only deals with love but also starts with death—the death of Lilia’s uncle (Eva Bouteraa, a true revelation), which forces her to leave her life in Paris and return to her native Tunisia, where her family knows nothing about her.

The film also delves into secrets: the secret of the deceased, who died under mysterious circumstances, and Lilia’s secret regarding her own sexuality, which is taboo among the generations of women in her family. Through this queer lens, the director, as in her previous two feature films (“As I Open My Eyes” and “A Tale of Love and Desire”), intertwines the personal and the political while confronting the traditions of Tunisia, the country where she once again sets her cameras.

“Lilia’s Journey Represents a Woman’s Emancipation from Her Family and Country”

“Seen as a defect, treated as a disease, the discomfort it caused spread to everyone,” the director explains in the press release for her film presented in Competition at the last Berlin Film Festival. “I was struck by how, in every Tunisian family, there is a ‘Daly’. This uncle, this cousin, this acquaintance, whose existence has been suppressed, and who remains a ghostly figure. This terrible death of Daly had to have a meaning. It allowed Lilia to reveal herself.”

“With Lilia’s trajectory [accompanied by her partner, played by Marion Barbeau, whom she introduces as her roommate], a woman’s emancipation from her family and her country is at play. How to have the courage and strength to be who she is? How to build a life, have a child without telling her own mother? How to move towards a future without embracing her present? At the beginning of the film, Lilia does not see this yet; she believes everything is under control. And it is there, in Tunisia, in a context hostile to her identity, that her reality begins to crumble.”

Thus the title of this beautiful, sensitive drama, which speaks to the unsaid as well as the things we try to hide, for the sake of image and respect for tradition, even when these impede possible emancipation (“Engineering is not a job for a woman,” they tell the heroine). “In a Whisper” doesn’t revolutionize the way it approaches its themes, but does so with great precision by paralleling Lilia’s journey with that of Daly, whom she learns about as she investigates. This progression is also reflected in the cinematography and the work of the director of photography, with light increasingly entering the house, decorated with objects belonging to Leyla Bouzid’s family.

The personal nature of the film is undeniable, emphasized by these elements of decor, while the title also highlights the tact with which she unfolds her story. Of love, desire, family, and death. In her third feature film, it is essential not to miss, for its themes, its actresses, and its director, who is more than ever someone to watch.

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