Sensuous Cinema: The Body in Contemporary Maghrebi Film, by Kaya Davies Hayon

• Main Author: Sheila Petty
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: University College Cork 2021-01-01
• Series: Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media
• Subjects: maghreb-france; corporeality; gender; embodied subjectivities; emotion
• Online Access: http://www.alphavillejournal.com/Issue20/HTML/ReviewPetty.html

In Sensuous Cinema: The Body in Contemporary Maghrebi Film, Kaya Davies Hayon sets out to examine “how cultural, gendered, religious and sexual identities are articulated on and through the body in cinematic representations of people of Maghrebi heritage” (20). She takes as her focus corporeality as a site of common concern in eleven films and makes the claim that no scholarship to date has focused exclusively on this point. Indeed, not only is the scholarship scarce, but actual representations and depictions of bodies, corporeal desire and emotional and sensual embodiments are rare in North African cultural expression. Her study aims to fill this gap “by providing the first longitudinal and comparative account of how Maghrebi people of different genders, ethnicities, sexualities, ages and classes have been represented corporeally in Maghrebi and French cinemas since the year 2000” (1-2). Davies Hayon offers a very readable volume that is well-researched and employs a thoughtful approach to the films under consideration.