Screen Picks

Satin Rouge (Thu.-Sun., Oct. 10-13, 7:30 p.m.; Fri., Oct. 11, 9:15 p.m.; Sat., Oct. 12, 9:30 p.m., Prince Music Theater, 1412 Chestnut St., 215-569-9700, www.princemusictheater.org) The Prince's program guide isn't the first place Raja Amari's tale of a Tunisian widow rediscovering herself through belly dancing has been compared to Dirty Dancing. But it's more like Belle de Jour without the surrealist misogyny. Amari, a former belly dancer herself, has fashioned an exquisitely observed tale of two women coming into their own: Lilia (Hiyam Abbas) sneaks down the stairs at night and into the world of beaded tops and pulsating drums (a milieu familiar from Mira Nair's excellent documentary India Cabaret), while her daughter Salma (Hend El Fahem) pursues an illicit romance with a cabaret musician. In the first scene, as Lilia spontaneously moves to the music while dusting off her dead husband's picture, you know you're in for something special. Amari captures details with such a light, sure touch, I couldn't help laughing with approval every time one of them fell into place. Amari doesn't vilify men -- in fact, only one plays a significant role; the cabaret drummer, wouldn't you know it, works at the club where Lilia dances, and eventually he falls for her as well as her daughter. Lilia doesn't need to shake off the yoke or unwanted advances so much as she needs to extricate herself from the roles she's bound to play: grieving widow, fretful mother, demure Arab woman. Satin Rouge (which, incidentally, means "red satin" -- the non-translation is a bit of a puzzle, since most of the movie is in Arabic, not French) doesn't push towards moments of big revelation; they mostly come as Lilia dances, finding her way into ways of experiencing her body that she's never considered. (Even that moment is immediately undercut, as the cabaret's owner opines that she has "fire" but "no technique.") Abbas registers ecstasy in her body, then her eyes, even as you sense her hesitating to give in to, essentially, herself. Marvelously subtle and ever-so-slightly inventive, Satin Rouge is a sensual delight.

Silver Rockets/Kool Things: 20 Years of Sonic Youth (Fri., Oct. 11, 9 p.m.; Tue., Oct. 15, 10:30 p.m., Sundance Channel) Christoph Dreher's adulatory documentary doesn't exactly ask the tough questions (like "Why don't you let Lee sing more?"), but in surveying the 20-year history of Sonic Youth, this overview collects clips from the band's many videos and films, which often tread the line between genius and bullshit. Looking back at Tamra Davis's "Kool Thing" video, it's hard to believe something so deliberately raw -- the grainy footage looks like it was developed in a cloud of truck exhaust -- ever got on MTV at all, let alone was played as relentlessly as it was. And I maintain a certain fondness for the downtown psychotronia "Death Valley '69," whose wallowing in gore and mass murder-obsessiveness seems almost quaint by today's standards. Silver Rockets isn't nearly as self-serving or mythologizing as 1991: The Year Punk Rock Broke, which essentially positioned The Youth as the Prometheus of a new generation, but it doesn't have the earlier film's goofy sincerity either. (Thurston Moore's anti-Motley Cre rants and a nameless roadie's fawning overtures to Iggy Pop lodged themselves pretty well in my freshman consciousness.) Unfortunately, Dreher spends so long rehashing old stories -- the band's early years with eardrum-busting composer Glenn Branca and so forth -- that he touches only glancingly on the post-Nirvana "alternative" explosion (which their signing to DGC helped cement) and the subsequent fallout (as evidenced by the dissolution of that label, which was also home to Nirvana and Elastica). Instead, we get too much of Kim's love for visual art and semi-random live footage, but then they've always been a band to whom trash is as important as treasure.

A Hard Day’s Night (Sat., Oct. 12, 3 p.m., Prince Music Theater; $29.99 DVD) There's no reason not to catch A Hard Day's Night this weekend, what with the Prince putting it up on the big screen and Miramax finally releasing its long-anticipated (i.e. delayed) DVD. Richard Lester's giddy, glorious film is a jaw-dropper, using some of the Beatles' most appealing music as the bait to lure viewers into a significantly experimental and groundbreaking film that's still being referenced (i.e. stolen from) nearly four decades later. (Check out Lester's early, anarchic short, "The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film," to see how jarring the same techniques can be without the Beatles' sugarcoating.) Other than the Lester short, the DVD's extras are copious but not particularly noteworthy -- everyone, it seems, was available for interviews except the surviving Beatles. Stacy Cochran's short Richard Lester! did a far better job of exploring the director's oeuvre, and the movie really deserves to be seen on the big screen, if you haven't before. But if you have, you know that watching A Hard Day's Night should be a regular occurrence, somewhere between brushing your teeth and going to the dentist. It's simply not possible to hear Ringo express his desire to be "two hairdressers" enough times, or to get sick of Macca calling Victor Spinetti "a clean old man." Try it and see.

Baran ($29.99 DVD) Speaking of "oft-delayed," Miramax showed Majid Majidi's touching movie at last year's Toronto film festival, flew Majidi in for interviews with American press, and then scotched plans for a wide release. Why? Among the wave of recent directors from Iran, Majidi is by far the most widely palatable, with such films as The Children of Heaven and The Color of Paradise drawing heavily on neorealist sentimentality and leaving few dry eyes in the house. Baran is slightly less of a tearjerker, but more relevantly features a political edge -- Majidi designed the film to draw attention to the plight of Afghan refugees in Iran, which he called the largest standing population of refugees anywhere in the world. (This was just before Sept. 11, 2001; the American bombing campaign has no doubt increased that number.) Baran (Zahra Bahrami) is a child who can only find needed work under camouflage, and Latif (Hossein Abedini) a clumsy laborer who develops a bond with this helpless, almost useless child. While Majidi's other films can choke on sentiment, this one balances it with a tough-minded approach, so the tears come singly and not in sticky waves. Given the extent to which movies like Kandahar and Jung in the Land of the Mujaheddin helped spread understanding, rather than fear, in the last year, you can only hope it wasn't commercial timidity that kept the film in the closet so long. At least we've got it now.

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