In a new release, Mohamed El-Assyouti finds the same old caricature of Islamic fundamentalism -- with a generous twist of moralising Damm Al-Ghazal (Gazelle Blood), written by Waheed Hamid and directed by Mohamed Yassin, is clearly a film with a message. A critique of Egyptian society especially harsh on wealth and corruption, or rather corrupt wealth, as well as the lack of moral fibre among the poor, it eschews Egyptian film's perennial tendency to portray the poor as good and the rich bad, with Hamid's heavy-handed screenplay moralising about where and how fanaticism grows: in the slums of the big city, among its dispossessed. The film opens with the wedding of the Girl (Mona Zaki), whose marriage to a house painter is cut short by the latter's untimely arrest for drug possession. This paves the way for two young men to fight over her: the burglar Atef (Amr Wakked), and the local drummer Risha (Mahmoud Abdel-Mughni) -- with the former beating the latter severely -- an incident that acts to transform the tabbal into an Islamic fundamentalist when he seeks vengeance with the aid of a gang of terrorists. Though not fooled by his sudden piety, the terrorists in question, answerable as they are to "desks in high places", decide to use his wrath to their own ends, making him the emir of a local jama'a, who wreck havoc on this poor housing quarter, scare away the belly dancer with whom Risha has had an affair -- that goes on in secret -- not only enforcing the veil and religious obedience but setting fire to the video store. His reward is to carry out the religious hadd (edict) of cutting the hand of the thief who beat him; yet the film drives it home too clearly that not all thieves are subject to the same punishment, for those who are sitting behind the high desks too are thieves. The Girl has been working in a health club owned by a wealthy lady (Youssra) who maternally takes her into her house when the terrorist threat soars. Yet she is forced to act as a bait to attract Risha into the neighbourhood, where she ends up dead in the ensuing battle with the police. For his part Risha, escaped, is seen sitting safely on the banks of the Nile. Though the film is set in the mid-1990s, the characters look and act as if they came straight out of a 1980s soap opera on the same theme, down to the obviously fake beards and the imagined fundamentalist uniform of the time. Nor does the weak characterisation help the cast -- which includes veteran Nour El-Sherif (the poor father-figure in contrast to Youssra's rich mother-figure). The performances are so routine it is hard to work out whether the intention is comedy or melodrama. El-Sherif's character recalls that of Hassan Hosni in Mohamed Khan's Faris Al-Madina (City Knight, 1989) -- too close a resemblance to be credible. �-la Friedrich Dèrrenmatt, Youssra was once poor; having cared for a wealthy old man, she then inherited his money -- in the process acquiring a mafioso-like ex-husband (Abdel-Aziz Makhioun) who prevents her from seeing her son -- yet another terrible cliché of Egyptian cinema, a typical 1980s Nadia El-Guindi character -- with Makhioun playing a repeat of the role of Adham El-Wazan, which he played in Faris Al-Madina. The Girl, the gazelle of the title, though the principal drive behind the drama, she is absent far too frequently; and her only moment of action is when she realises the gym trainer who has taken her out for a drink has no intention of marrying her and thus raising her status. Since the 1980s cinema and television have been coming to grips with fundamentalism, stressing such factors as poverty, ignorance and the opportunism of politicians but -- with the possible exception of Atef Hatata's French coproduced feature film Al-Abwab Al-Mughlaqa (Closed Doors, 2000) -- failing to address the root causes of the phenomenon. In Hatata's film the reductive dogma of the fundamentalists becomes the protagonist's sole solace in the midst not only of the difficult physical conditions in which he lives but systematic political and intellectual oppression. The entire film deals with just this character, while bigger budget productions written by better known screenwriters, in the attempt to bring the whole social fabric of Egypt into the picture by contrasting the fundamentalists with "normal" people, often live and die on the vaguest deceptive surface of the issues at stake. Such, alas, is the fate of Damm Al-Ghazal, which is also somewhat irritatingly in line with the official version of the story -- evidence of Hamid's films, even when they are critical of the powers that be, being invariably sanctioned by them. The present feature, revolving around a poor protagonist who ends up holding a gun, whether or not he uses it to massacre those who victimised him, is but a variation on many of Hamid's 30-some scripts: Samir Seif's Al-Ghoul (The Ghoul, 1983) and Al-Halfout (The Nobody, 1985) -- both Adel Imam vehicles -- as well as Atef El-Tayyeb's Al-Barii (The Innocent, 1986), starring Ahmed Zaki. Similarly, later Imam vehicles, penned by Hamid, like Sherif Arafa's Al-Irhab wal-Kabab (Terrorism and Kebab, 1992) and Al-Mansi (The Forgotten, 1993) are also like Hollywood action films in that, inducing a level of identification with the protagonist, they release pent up emotions of the audience's; in effect they make an excuse for violence, whether actual or (as in the famous case of Al-Irhab), potential. With the rise of the Muslim brotherhood in parliament, and the general upsurge in religious sentiment, the message of Damm Al-Ghazal is rather more emphatically indicting -- beware of those who exploit religion for their own political ends. The saddest part is that the film is so clumsy and unconvincing it manages to make a huge mess of communicating the message at stake.
