The title may be generic, but A Second Life is much more than a run-of-the-mill “disease of the week” melodrama. Anis Lassoued’s debut feature, which he co-wrote and produced with Chema Ben Chaabene, is an engrossing story of class divides in which an impoverished mother sells her adolescent son’s kidney without his knowledge after he gets into an accident. Included in the deal is that she and her two kids move in with the buyers, whose own son is the kidney recipient. While not without some first-feature slackness, the film offers an unforced emotional weight to both sides, with a well-scripted narrative and a fine central performance that could translate into a healthy festival life provided programmers pay attention to the increasingly attention-worthy films coming out of Tunisia.
Gadeha (Yassine Tormsi), twelve-years-old, is a nice kid hanging with a bad crowd who involve him in their petty theft shenanigans. When escaping from the cops, Gadeha is struck by a car and winds up in the hospital, but his mother Borkana (Dorsaf Ouertatani) has no insurance and can’t pay the medical bills. In comes Moez (Jamel Laroui) and Malika (writer-producer Chema Ben Chaabene) like angels from heaven, offering to pay for everything; Lassoued keeps things elliptical at the start and doesn’t show the deal they make, but when Borkana takes Gadeha and his younger sister Salma (Lilia Zaidi) to their new home on Moez’s property, audiences realize some troubling bargain has been arranged.
It’s all very perplexing for the adolescent, who can’t understand why this family is talking about him like a new son and showering him, his mother and sister with affection. Borkana had been melancholy and slightly bedraggled before, worn down by poverty resulting from her husband’s maltreatment and then abandonment, but now she’s got her hair done and is wearing new clothes, and her boy is meant to go to a snooty new private school far removed from the world he previously knew. When Moez and Malika’s delicate son Oussama (Ahmed Zakaria Chiboub) finally returns home from the hospital, he develops an instant attachment to Gadeha and the two become fast pals despite their socio-economic differences. The idyll comes crashing down however when Gadeha overhears his mother saying she hopes she did the right thing by selling his kidney.
The script and editing do an excellent job building up tension, keeping the emotional level relatively calm after initial scenes between Gadeha and his dodgy friends at the beach, until the boy is introduced to Oussama’s favorite pastime, archery, and something in the pit of our stomachs tells us this will not end well. Lassoued thankfully avoids outright tragedy, but two extremely well-played confrontational sequences lay bare both Gadeha’s sense of betrayal and the background to Borkana’s desperate act. It’s especially gratifying that her background and motivations are carefully woven into the overall story, which organically brings in not just abuse but the devastating impact of immigration on Tunisian working class families – her husband left the country without consulting her, and Gadeha’s daddy issues add an additional level of complexity to the boy’s internal struggles.
The role of confused, betrayed adolescent is of course a cinema staple, yet young Tormsi makes it his own, his hardened expression and projection of simmering fury well-calibrated and nicely contrasted with earlier scenes where his desire to fit in, shifting to confusion over his place in this new strange family, help to create a three-dimensional portrait; Lassoued’s previous shorts and documentaries focused on children, and clearly he knows how to bring out complex qualities in the younger set. The contrast between Oussama’s family and Gadeha’s is also believably reflected in their skin tones, where European pallor is a signifier for the elite and darker skin a sign of tribal origins.
There are times in the first half of A Second Life when certain scenes fit less tightly together than expected, but overall the construction is well thought-out and the film is peppered with strikingly memorable images, such as when Gadeha helps a bottle collector (Issam Bouchiba) on the beach, his aspect like a carnival balloon vendor as he walks away from the boy following a meaningful exchange. This balance, between a restrained delicacy and the more explosive scenes towards the end, are judiciously reflected in the cinematography.
Director: Anis Lassoued
Screenplay: Chema Ben Chaabene, Anis Lassoued
Cast: Yassine Tormsi, Ahmed Zakaria Chiboub, Jamel Laroui, Chema Ben Chaabene, Dorsaf Ouertatani, Anissa Lotfi, Lilia Zaidi, Mohamed Margua, Ahmed Amri, Issam Bouchiba, Anas Labidi, Donia Hamouda.
Producer: Chema Ben Chaabene, Anis Lassoued
Co-producers: Omar Ben Ali
Cinematography: Amine Messadi, Adonis Nadhem Romdhane
Production design: Taoufik Behi
Costume design: Anis Ayari
Editing: Kahena Attia Riveil, Seifallah Ben Othman, Sofiene Charrad
Music: Selim Arjoun
Sound: Aymen Toumi, Hechmi Joulak, Karim Toukabri
Production companies: Lumières Films (Tunisia), CTV Productions (Tunisia), SVP (Tunisia).
World sales:
Venue: Cairo International Film Festival (Horizons of Arab Cinema)
In Arabic, Tunisian dialect
92 minutes
