The alleyways of Halfaouine constitute a performative arena where young Noura fails spectacularly. The paper analyzes the circumcision scene and the subsequent “test of pain” as rituals of failed interpellation. Unlike the confident Rashid of Egyptian neo-realism, Noura is clumsy, weepy, and attracted to the erotic baraka (blessing/energy) of female singers. The street’s code—loud, aggressive, homosocial—alienates him. Boughedir thus critiques Bourguiba’s modernist project of “liberating” women while hardening men; Noura’s discomfort suggests that Tunisian masculinity remains a schizophrenic construct.
Criterion Collection / Artificial Eye (UK) / Tunisian Ministry of Culture print. mshahdt fylm Halfaouine Boy of the Terraces 1990 mtrjm
Unlike the overtly political cinema of Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina (Algeria) or the melancholic exile of Nabil Ayouch (Morocco), Halfaouine roots its decolonial discourse in the micro-geography of a Tunis working-class neighborhood. Released just three years after the 1987 “Change of Power” (when Ben Ali ousted Bourguiba), the film consciously retreats from state-sponsored nationalism to reclaim the sensory, haptic realities of pre-revolutionary daily life. This paper explores how the film’s three distinct spatial regimes—the street (male/public), the hammam (female/wet/private), and the terrace (liminal/overhead)—construct and deconstruct patriarchal masculinity. The alleyways of Halfaouine constitute a performative arena