The Architecture of the Erotic: Space, safety and sex in Mrs. Faiza and Dr. Love.
Tayla McGregor
Tayla McGregor
We all carry unspoken parts of ourselves: the identities we hide, desires we suppress and roles we perform for survival. For many women of colour, the self becomes fractured into the many roles that are performed for survival. In the French short film, Mrs. Faiza and Dr. Love, directed by Anissa Daoud, this tension takes center stage in a tender, comedic and vulnerable way. Through the story of the widowed mother who transforms from nurse into sex therapist, the film explores how respectability politics, motherhood and the erotic collide and erupt. Women have long been conditioned to choose between false binaries that demand a choice between desire or expectations, in roles such as motherhood and career, self-fulfillment and duty. Daoud’s film refuses this choice, suggesting that liberation does not require an escape from the domestic, but instead, a radical remaking of its meaning.
The title of the film itself suggests a split subjectivity, as we meet the different versions of Mrs. Faiza and Dr. Love. The former who performs as the widowed mother and caregiver and the latter, the liberated sex therapist who challenges taboos around pleasure. Faiza lives both lives, and the film closes the divide between the two subjectivities.
From the opening shots of uniform apartment buildings, the viewer becomes aware of space. Inside one of the buildings, Faiza tends to an elderly woman. Her face is obscured from the camera. However, this image of a docile nurse is short-lived. The image of respectable and acceptable feminine identity slowly unravels as Faiza bids farewell to this identity. As she returns to her apartment - which she shares with her two children, and also doubles as a clinic for sex therapy. Faiza does not escape from the home, instead she reclaims it. She transforms her domestic space into a site of radical care.
Drawing on Audre Lorde’s seminal notion of the erotic as a “resource within each of us” that is “rooted in the power of unexpressed or unrecognised feeling,” the film defines care to include desire, pleasure and emotional vulnerability. Faiza tells her first couple, “I’m not your imam, or your mother, or your mother-in-law,” she refuses the inherited roles of respectability that polices sexual agency. Furthermore, by asking them a question like “What’s your kink besides penetration?” she reframes the erotic as knowledge, both of the self and for others.
And yet, her liberation is monitored and shamed. When her kind neighbour, Mr. Ben, hangs her doctor’s sign in the apartment building’s entrance, the camera focuses not on the text but on her expression. A fleeting moment of joy. As Faiza’s journey unfolds amidst the growing tension of her community’s disapproval, the film highlights attention to space: apartment corridors, the divider in the living room, her bedroom. Each space illustrates the tight boundaries within which we must navigate: physically, emotionally and socially.
One particular scene beautifully illustrates this tug of war. The camera remains still as Faiza stands beside a cold, disapproving male neighbour in between a row of metallic mailboxes. The space feels suffocating and narrow. The man shoots her a look of disgust and Faiza cowers under his gaze. She looks up and sees the vandalised placard, with her practice and name, that she once looked at with such adoration.
This tension erupts in a heated kitchen argument with her children, where Faiza finally cries out what she has held in for years: “This isn’t what I dreamed of. It's fate.” She confesses, an admission that she never wanted to be a mother in the first place. In this moment, the hold of respectability ruptures, exposing the years of the hidden eroticism. As Lorde defines it as “an assertion of the life force of women.” Lorde goes on to argue that the suppression of the erotic presents itself as the illusion of strength. The image of the self-sacrificial maternal figure comes at a cost and Faiza’s resistance isn’t loud, but it’s quiet and soft. The home, once a symbol of confinement, gradually becomes a site of both reclamation and return. In the safety of her room, Faiza hides cigarettes and stares longingly at an old photograph of herself as a proud medical student. These small, intimate acts signal the persistence of the erotic -- the self that once dreamed beyond the roles of the respectable mother and wife. Her room becomes a refuge.
This transformation is consistently visualised through architecture and structure. Yet, Mrs. Faiza and Dr. Love never lets these identities remain apart, as they start to co-exist within her. Faiza brings the mother and sex therapist into the same room. The erotic, as Audre Lorde argues, is not just sex: it is a form of knowledge, power and deeply being felt. In a tender moment, Faiza speaks softly to a young boy, “what’s important is how you feel. It’s up to you,” she tells him, as the camera lingers on his tear-stained cheek. The frame becomes a space of intimacy, the apartment transformed into a safe sanctuary.
This same feeling of tenderness culminates in the final scene of the film. Faiza slips into bed and her children leave behind a comic titled Mrs. Faiza and Dr. Love. She stares at the two cartoon women with gentle pride, her face lit by a soft close-up. The camera then pulls away, returning to the same wide shot of the apartment block, mimicking the opening of the film. But this time, her window glows warmly. The silence is broken only by the sound of a dial tone as she calls a client. She reclaims her space fully, in her room, her space, her site of reclamation.
————
About Tyla
Bio: Tayla McGregor is an emerging film professional passionate about storytelling, community, and the visual politics of cinema. She holds both a BA and a BA (Hons) in Film and Television Studies from the University of Cape Town.
Currently working at Film Afrika, Tayla’s passion lies in amplifying African voices and creating inclusive spaces for diverse stories. She has contributed to community-based film projects, such as the Cape Town Museum of Childhood’s smartphone documentary programme in 2024, and has extensive experience in dubbing and script adaptation for international and local television.
Through her work, Tayla seeks to connect audiences to meaningful cinematic experiences that celebrate culture, identity, and the power of African filmmaking practices to spark dialogue and connection.
We all carry unspoken parts of ourselves: the identities we hide, desires we suppress and roles we perform for survival. For many women of colour, the self becomes fractured into the many roles that are performed for survival. In the French short film, Mrs. Faiza and Dr. Love, directed by Anissa Daoud, this tension takes center stage in a tender, comedic and vulnerable way. Through the story of the widowed mother who transforms from nurse into sex therapist, the film explores how respectability politics, motherhood and the erotic collide and erupt. Women have long been conditioned to choose between false binaries that demand a choice between desire or expectations, in roles such as motherhood and career, self-fulfillment and duty. Daoud’s film refuses this choice, suggesting that liberation does not require an escape from the domestic, but instead, a radical remaking of its meaning.
The title of the film itself suggests a split subjectivity, as we meet the different versions of Mrs. Faiza and Dr. Love. The former who performs as the widowed mother and caregiver and the latter, the liberated sex therapist who challenges taboos around pleasure. Faiza lives both lives, and the film closes the divide between the two subjectivities.
From the opening shots of uniform apartment buildings, the viewer becomes aware of space. Inside one of the buildings, Faiza tends to an elderly woman. Her face is obscured from the camera. However, this image of a docile nurse is short-lived. The image of respectable and acceptable feminine identity slowly unravels as Faiza bids farewell to this identity. As she returns to her apartment - which she shares with her two children, and also doubles as a clinic for sex therapy. Faiza does not escape from the home, instead she reclaims it. She transforms her domestic space into a site of radical care.
Drawing on Audre Lorde’s seminal notion of the erotic as a “resource within each of us” that is “rooted in the power of unexpressed or unrecognised feeling,” the film defines care to include desire, pleasure and emotional vulnerability. Faiza tells her first couple, “I’m not your imam, or your mother, or your mother-in-law,” she refuses the inherited roles of respectability that polices sexual agency. Furthermore, by asking them a question like “What’s your kink besides penetration?” she reframes the erotic as knowledge, both of the self and for others.
And yet, her liberation is monitored and shamed. When her kind neighbour, Mr. Ben, hangs her doctor’s sign in the apartment building’s entrance, the camera focuses not on the text but on her expression. A fleeting moment of joy. As Faiza’s journey unfolds amidst the growing tension of her community’s disapproval, the film highlights attention to space: apartment corridors, the divider in the living room, her bedroom. Each space illustrates the tight boundaries within which we must navigate: physically, emotionally and socially.
One particular scene beautifully illustrates this tug of war. The camera remains still as Faiza stands beside a cold, disapproving male neighbour in between a row of metallic mailboxes. The space feels suffocating and narrow. The man shoots her a look of disgust and Faiza cowers under his gaze. She looks up and sees the vandalised placard, with her practice and name, that she once looked at with such adoration.
This tension erupts in a heated kitchen argument with her children, where Faiza finally cries out what she has held in for years: “This isn’t what I dreamed of. It's fate.” She confesses, an admission that she never wanted to be a mother in the first place. In this moment, the hold of respectability ruptures, exposing the years of the hidden eroticism. As Lorde defines it as “an assertion of the life force of women.” Lorde goes on to argue that the suppression of the erotic presents itself as the illusion of strength. The image of the self-sacrificial maternal figure comes at a cost and Faiza’s resistance isn’t loud, but it’s quiet and soft. The home, once a symbol of confinement, gradually becomes a site of both reclamation and return. In the safety of her room, Faiza hides cigarettes and stares longingly at an old photograph of herself as a proud medical student. These small, intimate acts signal the persistence of the erotic -- the self that once dreamed beyond the roles of the respectable mother and wife. Her room becomes a refuge.
This transformation is consistently visualised through architecture and structure. Yet, Mrs. Faiza and Dr. Love never lets these identities remain apart, as they start to co-exist within her. Faiza brings the mother and sex therapist into the same room. The erotic, as Audre Lorde argues, is not just sex: it is a form of knowledge, power and deeply being felt. In a tender moment, Faiza speaks softly to a young boy, “what’s important is how you feel. It’s up to you,” she tells him, as the camera lingers on his tear-stained cheek. The frame becomes a space of intimacy, the apartment transformed into a safe sanctuary.
This same feeling of tenderness culminates in the final scene of the film. Faiza slips into bed and her children leave behind a comic titled Mrs. Faiza and Dr. Love. She stares at the two cartoon women with gentle pride, her face lit by a soft close-up. The camera then pulls away, returning to the same wide shot of the apartment block, mimicking the opening of the film. But this time, her window glows warmly. The silence is broken only by the sound of a dial tone as she calls a client. She reclaims her space fully, in her room, her space, her site of reclamation.
————
About Tyla
Bio: Tayla McGregor is an emerging film professional passionate about storytelling, community, and the visual politics of cinema. She holds both a BA and a BA (Hons) in Film and Television Studies from the University of Cape Town.
Currently working at Film Afrika, Tayla’s passion lies in amplifying African voices and creating inclusive spaces for diverse stories. She has contributed to community-based film projects, such as the Cape Town Museum of Childhood’s smartphone documentary programme in 2024, and has extensive experience in dubbing and script adaptation for international and local television.
Through her work, Tayla seeks to connect audiences to meaningful cinematic experiences that celebrate culture, identity, and the power of African filmmaking practices to spark dialogue and connection.
We all carry unspoken parts of ourselves: the identities we hide, desires we suppress and roles we perform for survival. For many women of colour, the self becomes fractured into the many roles that are performed for survival. In the French short film, Mrs. Faiza and Dr. Love, directed by Anissa Daoud, this tension takes center stage in a tender, comedic and vulnerable way. Through the story of the widowed mother who transforms from nurse into sex therapist, the film explores how respectability politics, motherhood and the erotic collide and erupt. Women have long been conditioned to choose between false binaries that demand a choice between desire or expectations, in roles such as motherhood and career, self-fulfillment and duty. Daoud’s film refuses this choice, suggesting that liberation does not require an escape from the domestic, but instead, a radical remaking of its meaning.
The title of the film itself suggests a split subjectivity, as we meet the different versions of Mrs. Faiza and Dr. Love. The former who performs as the widowed mother and caregiver and the latter, the liberated sex therapist who challenges taboos around pleasure. Faiza lives both lives, and the film closes the divide between the two subjectivities.
From the opening shots of uniform apartment buildings, the viewer becomes aware of space. Inside one of the buildings, Faiza tends to an elderly woman. Her face is obscured from the camera. However, this image of a docile nurse is short-lived. The image of respectable and acceptable feminine identity slowly unravels as Faiza bids farewell to this identity. As she returns to her apartment - which she shares with her two children, and also doubles as a clinic for sex therapy. Faiza does not escape from the home, instead she reclaims it. She transforms her domestic space into a site of radical care.
Drawing on Audre Lorde’s seminal notion of the erotic as a “resource within each of us” that is “rooted in the power of unexpressed or unrecognised feeling,” the film defines care to include desire, pleasure and emotional vulnerability. Faiza tells her first couple, “I’m not your imam, or your mother, or your mother-in-law,” she refuses the inherited roles of respectability that polices sexual agency. Furthermore, by asking them a question like “What’s your kink besides penetration?” she reframes the erotic as knowledge, both of the self and for others.
And yet, her liberation is monitored and shamed. When her kind neighbour, Mr. Ben, hangs her doctor’s sign in the apartment building’s entrance, the camera focuses not on the text but on her expression. A fleeting moment of joy. As Faiza’s journey unfolds amidst the growing tension of her community’s disapproval, the film highlights attention to space: apartment corridors, the divider in the living room, her bedroom. Each space illustrates the tight boundaries within which we must navigate: physically, emotionally and socially.
One particular scene beautifully illustrates this tug of war. The camera remains still as Faiza stands beside a cold, disapproving male neighbour in between a row of metallic mailboxes. The space feels suffocating and narrow. The man shoots her a look of disgust and Faiza cowers under his gaze. She looks up and sees the vandalised placard, with her practice and name, that she once looked at with such adoration.
This tension erupts in a heated kitchen argument with her children, where Faiza finally cries out what she has held in for years: “This isn’t what I dreamed of. It's fate.” She confesses, an admission that she never wanted to be a mother in the first place. In this moment, the hold of respectability ruptures, exposing the years of the hidden eroticism. As Lorde defines it as “an assertion of the life force of women.” Lorde goes on to argue that the suppression of the erotic presents itself as the illusion of strength. The image of the self-sacrificial maternal figure comes at a cost and Faiza’s resistance isn’t loud, but it’s quiet and soft. The home, once a symbol of confinement, gradually becomes a site of both reclamation and return. In the safety of her room, Faiza hides cigarettes and stares longingly at an old photograph of herself as a proud medical student. These small, intimate acts signal the persistence of the erotic -- the self that once dreamed beyond the roles of the respectable mother and wife. Her room becomes a refuge.
This transformation is consistently visualised through architecture and structure. Yet, Mrs. Faiza and Dr. Love never lets these identities remain apart, as they start to co-exist within her. Faiza brings the mother and sex therapist into the same room. The erotic, as Audre Lorde argues, is not just sex: it is a form of knowledge, power and deeply being felt. In a tender moment, Faiza speaks softly to a young boy, “what’s important is how you feel. It’s up to you,” she tells him, as the camera lingers on his tear-stained cheek. The frame becomes a space of intimacy, the apartment transformed into a safe sanctuary.
This same feeling of tenderness culminates in the final scene of the film. Faiza slips into bed and her children leave behind a comic titled Mrs. Faiza and Dr. Love. She stares at the two cartoon women with gentle pride, her face lit by a soft close-up. The camera then pulls away, returning to the same wide shot of the apartment block, mimicking the opening of the film. But this time, her window glows warmly. The silence is broken only by the sound of a dial tone as she calls a client. She reclaims her space fully, in her room, her space, her site of reclamation.
————
About Tyla
Bio: Tayla McGregor is an emerging film professional passionate about storytelling, community, and the visual politics of cinema. She holds both a BA and a BA (Hons) in Film and Television Studies from the University of Cape Town.
Currently working at Film Afrika, Tayla’s passion lies in amplifying African voices and creating inclusive spaces for diverse stories. She has contributed to community-based film projects, such as the Cape Town Museum of Childhood’s smartphone documentary programme in 2024, and has extensive experience in dubbing and script adaptation for international and local television.
Through her work, Tayla seeks to connect audiences to meaningful cinematic experiences that celebrate culture, identity, and the power of African filmmaking practices to spark dialogue and connection.