One interesting curfew-time activity that has taken place in Cairo since 14 August is movie night. While many watched television — old and new television series, Arabic and foreign films — and others used the opportunity to spend more time with their families, cinephiles held movie nights at their homes, gathering to see films stored on computers that some of them wouldn't have had the chance to see, “a wealth” of mostly pirated award-winning material stored on hard drives and flash memory cards exchanged, enjoyed and often heatedly discussed. The first choice in the movie-night series I attended was Lardi di biciclette (Bicycle Thieves), one of Italy's old and magical productions, directed by Vittorio De Sica in 1948. The 90-minute film opens with the poor man Antonio (Lamberto Maggiorani) finally offered a job but on condition that he has to have a bicycle before he can take it: he will use it to go around Rome pasting film posters on the walls. Antonio doesn't have the money to pay the man who has been fixing his bike, which has been broken for a long time, and so his wife Maria (Lianella Carell) gathers all the bed sheets of the house and sells them so that her husband can redeem his bicycle. The couple's son Bruno (Enzo Staiola) is extremely excited about the bicycle. On his first day with the bicycle, Antonio offers his son a lift. But, while going about his new job, the bicycle is stolen. Antonio chases the thief through the streets of Rome until he finally loses him. So, desperate, Antonio and Bruno head to a place where all the stolen bicycles are gathered. Antonio cannot find his bicycle there, but the search continues, with random accusations on the street, in the market and even at church where Antonio interrupts the service and creates a huge commotion. The relation between father and son seems to change when Antonio fails to protect his bicycle, and it's as if his desperation to have it back is an attempt to regain his status as a father capable of giving his son the protection he requires. This is clear in the scene of the restaurant where Antonio wants to order all the expensive dishes that the rich people next to them are eating. When he grows tired of searching for his bicycle, however, Antonio — noticing and monitoring an unattended bicycle other than his own — finally decides to steal it. In the event he is caught and beaten up, however, right before Bruno. Staiola's performance was epic with an expressive face communicating mixed emotions, insecurity, deep sorrow and yearning for respect. De Sica manages to offer a panoramic tour of Rome in 1948 in this cinematic critique of Italian society, presenting all the contradictions and pains of a country heading for the unknown. The film won the Silver Ribbon Award for Best Cinematography, Best Director, Best Film, Best Score and Best Screenplay at the Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists Festival in 1949, as well as the BAFTA Award and the Bodil Award for Best European Film in 1951. The film will be screened at Artellewa on 4 October. (see Listings p.24) *** The next offering in the series was Michael Haneke's classic La Pianiste (The Piano Teacher), which in 2001 collected the Best Actor, Best Actress and Grand Prize of the Jury at the Cannes Film Festival. The Piano Teacher features Erika Kohut (Isabella Huppert), a piano instructor at the Vienna Conservatory in her late 30s living with her hysterical mother (Annie Girardot) to whom she is bound by an unhealthy love-hate relationship. Erika is firm and grim-faced, well-known for being a strict teacher who doesn't take mistakes lightly. Slaps are occasionally exchanged, with Erika's mother leaving her no room to spend time outside the home or develop a social, much less a love life. They sleep in the same room, and as much as she resents it Erika needs her mother's caring love. Erika's other side is revealed when it becomes clear that she regularly visits a porn store to fulfil her sexual appetite by watching films there. In one very disturbing scene she locks the room and starts to choose between the porn films when suddenly noticing a used napkin left over by the previous (male) customer, she picks it up and starts to smell it. When a student named Walter (Benoit Magimel) joins Erika's class and begins to show a romantic interest in her, Erika succumbs. Soon the two of them sneak into one of the school's bathrooms but as they are about to have a sexual encounter, Erika shocks Walter by refusing to go past a certain point. In an excruciating scene, Erika seems to lose her virginity in her own bathroom, alone, with a sharp tool; directly afterwards, she is having supper with her mother when the latter notices blood on Erika's leg. Erika turns out to have unusual desires; she would watch people having sex in a car and gratify herself, at the risk of being caught. Erika is a tough submissive who has pleasure only in pain, something Walter doesn't realise till later when, tormented, he meets her at her house and she hands him a letter explaining her fantasies. Yet Walter is repelled by sadomasochism and he ends up beating Erika brutally at her house, having locked her mother in her room. Huppert gives a masterly performance in Haneke's quicksand piece, presenting a complex and deep character full of details and hidden secrets. It isn't easy for Magimel to compete with such a performance, but in the end he lives up to the challenge.
