Tlamess

Synopsis

the man, known only as S, is a deserter who runs away from the army after his mother's death. The opening scenes are beautifully composed, playing with light and darkness, shadow and silhouette, as the soldiers cross a moonlit river and then in daylight move through a desert ravine where a Qaba-like black monolith incongruously sits in the landscape. Information is intelligently delivered through the visuals rather than the almost nonexistent dialogue, conveying mood far more sensitively than mere words. When his leave period expires and the military police come for him, S slips out and escapes through a dystopian landscape of empty plots, half-constructed cement buildings and grey colorless skies, the bleakness emphasized by a crescendo of dissonant noise on the soundtrack. He breaks into an empty apartment on the edge of nowhere but winds up fleeing, naked, when the cops arrive. As he walks, endlessly, through rocky terrain strewn with what looks like rubbish, the noise becomes more oppressive until the scene suddenly shifts to a woman, F, sitting contemplatively in a child's room, soon revealed to be a furniture store.