‘In a Whisper’ Review: Hiam Abbass in an Eloquent Tunisian Drama About Clandestine Homosexuality

In a Whisper (À voix basse) is a fitting title for Tunisian director Leyla Bouzid’s quietly effective third feature, which depicts the struggles of gays and lesbians in a country where being homosexual is both an affront to many Muslim families and a crime punishable by law.

Part intimate drama and part low-key detective story, this subtly woven narrative focuses on 30-something Lilia (promising newcomer Eya Bouteraa), a Paris-based engineer returning to her native city of Sousse for the funeral of a gay uncle, Daly, who died under mysterious circumstances.

Lilia brings along her French girlfriend, Alice (Marion Barbeau), but parks her in a nearby hotel to keep their relationship under wraps. She doesn’t want to offend her hot-headed grandmother, nor her mother, Wahida (Hiam Abbass), who isn’t quite ready to welcome her daughter’s sexual orientation.  

Bouzid, who also penned the screenplay, is thus telling two stories at once here: The first is an investigation into the death of Daly, who maintained a hidden lifestyle for decades, underscoring the plight of an LGBTQ community forced to live with the threat of persecution forever hanging over them. The second is about Lilia coming to terms with her own homosexuality, which she exercises freely in France but continues to conceal from her loved ones back home, fearing their criticism or rejection.

Both stories reflect how being gay in Tunisia has never been easy — and in some cases can be deadly. But as Lilia starts to learn more about her uncle’s life, interviewing old friends and lovers to find out what happened to him, we begin to see how the situation has managed to progress from one generation to the next, even if it’s still far from perfect.

Lilia’s journey is captured through warm, naturalistic imagery (courtesy of Sébastien Goepfert) that emphasizes the bucolic side of the Tunisian locations, especially the congenial home where her relatives are all gathered for the funeral. They’re a rather traditional Muslim family but they’re not strictly religious, either. (One aunt’s specialty is making mojitos with fresh coriander from the backyard.) And yet Lilia is unable to open up to them about her love affair with Alice, claiming the latter is only a roommate and keeping her mostly out of sight. That is, until Alice decides she’s had enough of the lies and brazenly shows up one morning at the household, causing a stir.

If conflicts occasionally flare up, In a Whisper is not exactly a bracing drama. Bouzid perhaps has too much affection for her characters to put them through the wringer, preferring to chronicle their wavering intimate relationships, and, at times, their sensuality. As in her previous feature, A Tale of Love and Desire, which focused on a young North African couple hooking up in Paris, she has a lyrical way of filming bodies melding together — most notably in a scene where she employs superimpositions to show Lilia and Alice in various states of ecstasy, with composer Yom’s score providing a jazzy accompaniment.

When her movie does get overtly political, it’s to underline how Tunisia’s gay community is still scorned by both Muslim families and the government, including two detectives called in to see if there was any foul play involved in Daly’s death. And yet, hope exists in the form of a new generation that’s grown more open-minded than its predecessors, although Lilia also encounters gay men who continue to live in fear, not to mention a mother who refuses to accept her for who she is.

The contradictions of modern Tunisian life are not lost on Bouzid, whose film shares some similarities with Hafsia Herzi’s award-winning drama The Little Sister, which movingly depicted a budding lesbian’s struggles with her family and her Islamic faith. Both stories are about young women torn between sexual desire and the desire to please their parents, who often prefer to keep certain truths unspoken at home.

In a Whisper ultimately proves that such a clandestine existence can also break a person — and may in fact be the real culprit behind the death of Daly, a passionate man who remained forever in the closet. Lilia may only be back in town from Paris for a week; it’s enough to teach her that she may not want to follow in her beloved uncle’s footsteps.

In Bouzid’s eloquent vision of family ties, a past like Daly’s both haunts the present and informs it. The director illustrates this idea by having certain flashbacks creep into contemporary scenes, revealing multiple generations crossing paths in a house filled with memories both good and bad. If In a Whisper begins with the quiet despair of a funeral, it ends with a joyous communal celebration in which life not only goes on, but can be lived more fully out in the open.