"Satin Rouge"

Later, once Lilia has penetrated the world of the club, she is befriended by the lead dancer, the nearing-50 Folla (Monia Hichri), who's quintessential proof that every country and every culture has its version of the Big Ol' Gal. When Folla dances, the earth shakes: With her breasts front-loaded into a sequined bra and her exposed tummy shimmering with glitter lotion, she's a force of nature with a mighty big glamour quotient. Off-stage, she's loud and likable, and there's an almost flirtatious quality to the way she talks to prim Lilia: Running into her serendipitously at the fabric store, she calls out, "Hello, young lady!" obviously addressing the person Lilia is instead of the culturally approved image she projects.

Don't think I can't hear you all groaning: Few people in their right mind wouldn't be skeptical about a movie that shows a woman's sexual awakening at middle age. But Amari has made a movie about a woman, not an idea. When we first see Lilia dancing in the club, her wildness (she's dancing for herself, not for her audience) is as embarrassing to us as it is to her. But later, as she learns the moves and learns to speak to her audience (they are there to hear what she has to say, after all), her newfound openness is a thing of beauty in itself.

Lilia's hips are what you would kindly call ample, and the skin on her stomach has lost some of its stretch. But there's a loveliness to her body -- and a couldn't-care-less assertiveness in its movements -- that take the movie beyond feminist statement-making. Dancing is a way of reveling in what one's got, and "Satin Rouge" recognizes that revelry is perhaps the purest form of consciousness raising.

"Satin Rouge" doesn't shy away from some surprising complications, particularly the events that unfold after Lilia notices the way one of the cabaret musicians (Maher Kamoun) has been eyeing her. It's important to point out, too, that Amari looks at her story from all angles: If the pouty teenage Selma reminds us how unappreciative children can be of their parents' care and attention, the movie also shows us how tyrannical and downright selfish parental caretaking can be. (An older neighbor, after hearing that Selma has been sick, inquires about how she's feeling only to move on to scolding her for not taking care of herself, turning an ostensibly polite query into a "Think of your poor mother!" diatribe.)

Amari neither makes the men villains nor lets them off the hook: When Lilia first walks into that club in her drab housedress, every man eyes her lasciviously; one of them, edging up to her with moist google eyes, purrs "Hello, beauty! What are you looking for?" It's as if their job is to make her feel dirty and it would be unmanly to let her down.

Later, though, when Lilia begins dancing, we notice that the club is filled with all kinds of men of all ages: Some of them are leering (there are always going to be those), but there are plenty who are simply having a good time, enjoying the show and basking in the presence of the women onstage. (Amari seems to understand the politics of "erotic dancing" better than any of the mainstream Western filmmakers who have made movies on the subject.)

But Amari's even-handedness always draws us back to Lilia, who is only just now, in middle age, inching her way toward real youthfulness. There's something delightfully girlish about the way she replaces her dowdy handbag with a racy new pocketbook (a slim little python-print number). But "Satin Rouge" is less about a superficial midlife crisis than it is about the need to stay in touch with your own skin, at 18 or 80. The personal is always going to be political; stretch marks are their own kind of map.

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