Isabelle Eberhardt (film)

Isabelle Eberhardt is a 1991 AustralianFrench biographical drama film directed by Ian Pringle. The film follows the adult life of Isabelle Eberhardt and was filmed in Algiers, Paris and Geneva. It stars Mathilda May as Eberhardt and Peter OToole as Hubert Lyautey. It received financial backing from the Film Finance Corporation Australia and was nominated for three awards at the 1991 Australian Film Institute Awards. It was screened at the 1991 Melbourne International Film Festival and was also released in cinemas in Australia, though did not have a home media release. The film received mixed to negative reviews.

Eberhardt attracts increasing attention as her writings become more political, a reaction to her witnessing the abuses of the French colonists. A French military officer named Comte Richard Moire imprisons Eberhardt and abuses her. An Arab swordsman viciously attacks her, and Eberhardt believes that Comte is responsible for the attack. Comte arranges for Eberhardts deportation, though she returns to North Africa against Slimenes wishes. After her return she meets another French officer, Major Hubert Lyautey Peter OToole. The two become friends, however, when Lyautey asks Eberhardt to report to him on hostile Arab groups, she faces an ethical dilemma.Writing in Australian Film 19781994, Raymond Younis attributed many themes to the film, saying it encompassed the search for identity and the creative constitution of the self the nature and role of the writer in a tumultuous world where values are compromised or surrendered the issue of complicity in dishonourable political and military processes and in the brutality of colonisation the paradox of tribal conflict among the indigenous people the need for love and companionship and the desire for oblivion under a sky which seems to be indifferent to the fate of such restless and tormented wanderers. ........

Source: Wikipedia