Hiam Abbass Pulls Some Strings for Miu Miu

We’re longstanding fans of The Women’s Tales, Miu Miu’s series of short films directed by women that focus on aspects of the female experience, which debuted in 2011. For its sixth installment, the brand chose Palestinian director Hiam Abbass, who’s known as much for her work in front of the camera as behind it: she’s starred in dozens of films in her home country as well as abroad, including Steven Spielberg’s Munich. Her first feature, Inheritance, debuted last year.

For Le Donne della Vucciria, her contribution to The Women’s Tales, Abbass presents a charming vignette set in Palermo, Sicily. A middle-aged, married couple, obviously still very much in love, simultaneously work on two projects: she sews miniature versions of Miu Miu’s elegant, polished Fall 2013 line, while he constructs the marionettes they’ll clothe. Before long, we learn the soundtrack is, surprise!, diegetic: the haunting soprano is actually drifting in through an open window from the village square outside, where an extremely well-dressed (and well-lit!) party is in progress. It belongs to the beautiful Lubna Azabal, who engages plenty of partygoers—all styled to the nines, of course, in Miu Miu—in exuberant, suspiciously in-sync dancing (remember those marionettes?) and entices the married couple to throw confetti down. When it’s all over, she and her violinist take a moped ride along the Italian coast: a stylish departure if ever there was one.

FOR MORE ON THE WOMEN’S TALES, VISIT MIU MIU’S WEBSITE.