Mohamed El-Assyouti turns into an emphatically male film buff Don Juan -- or rather the Haroun Al-Rasheed-type macho protagonist -- has always fascinated conventional film-goers in Egypt. While the great Rushdie Abaza might have embodied the prototype, screen giants ranging from singer Mohamed Fawzi to comedian Fouad El-Mohandes all tried their hand at it. There is, as a result, a stock of formulaic comedy "classics" in which one man and a number of women play out the battle of the sexes; love will tend to conquer all else, in the end, with the always-monogamous woman forgiving the amorous trespasses of the love of her life, and the couple ending up happily ever after. Recent variations on this theme include what is perhaps Inas El-Degheidi's only noteworthy directorial effort, Imra'a Waheda la Takfi (One Woman is not Enough), written by Abdel-Hayy Adeeb and starring Ahmed Zaki, Yousra, Fifi Abdu and Samah Anwar. In this, the latter -- based on a reportedly autobiographical short story by the scriptwriter's son, the media mogul Emadeddin Adeeb -- the three last-mentioned actresses play women from widely varying socio-cultural backgrounds, who present the intelligence of the journalist protagonist (Ahmed Zaki) with three different challenges. Sayedaati Anesaati (Mrs and Misses) -- written, produced and directed by Raafat El-Meehi, and starring Mahmoud Abdel-Aziz opposite Maali Zayed and Abla Kamel -- makes for an interesting, rather ironic variation. It depicts a society in which males and females exchange roles, with the case of a man who ends up marrying four women on the same day at the centre of the action -- so hilarious it makes this one of the most remarkable comedies of the last 25 years. At the centre of this summer's Hareem Kareem (Kareem's Harem) -- written by Zeinab Aziz, directed by Ali Idriss and starring pop singer Mustafa Qamar opposite Yasmine Abdel-Aziz, Dalia El-Beheiri, Ola Ghanem, Basma, Riham Abdel-Gahfour, Talaat Zakaria as well as Edouard and Hanaa El-Shourbaghi -- is a sad man surrounded by women in love with him, who nonetheless remains sad. The film opens with Kareem's wife catching him with a prostitute (brought over by a visiting cousin): she insists on divorce. And asking his old university buddies to intervene on his behalf (it so happens that they are all unfulfilled women), the handsome newly- divorced man ends up falling prey to their persistent advances. Starring a video-clip icon of sorts, the film has prompted the criticism that it is no more than a string of music videos involving the customary male singer surrounded by pretty women; it will in fact be sold twice over, as a film and as a series of Mustafa Qamar clips, the latter, presumably, to satellite channels. Though it was undeniably made to market Qamar's music, however, there is more to Hareem Kareem than just that. The first collaboration between Aziz and Idriss -- dedicated to the latter's Higher Cinema Institute graduate class, the class of 1987 -- it is an interesting variation on new-wave comedy, which uncharacteristically relies wholly on a tight script, retaining a strong structure. Rather than the whims of a single star character, therefore, it is driven by dramatic motive -- something that sounds almost obsolete in the context of contemporary Egyptian film. Idriss also shows control of picture and rhythm, which invests the film with credibility as well as entertainment value. And given the constraint of having Qamar in the lead role, the casting can only be described as excellent. The four girlfriends, for their part, give a refreshingly stylised performance; of particular note is El-Beheiri's improved acting skill. Other casting strong points include the lightness with which Khaled Sarhan and Edouard transcend the limitations of being typecast as El-Beheiri's police officer husband and Kareem's romantic rival, respectively. Qamar starred opposite Ahmed Zaki in Magdi Ahmed Ali's period drama Al-Batal (The Hero) and later in Ali Idriss's debut Asshab Walla Business (Friends or Business), both written by Medhat El-Adl. He starred in two Hollywood action rip-offs, Qalb Gari' (Brave Heart) and Hobbak Nar (Your Love is Fire), by Mohamed El-Naggar and Ihab Radi respectively. And he starred in Alaa Kareem's Al-Hobb Al-Awwal (First Love). But except for "Friends or Business" and "Brave Heart", his cinematic endeavours have been box-office fiascos. Thus, though there are enough problems with the film to place it among the many forgettable features produced commercially every year, Hareem Kareem is perhaps Qamar's biggest hit to date. Of the problems in question, Qamar and Abdel-Aziz's lack of charisma is perhaps the greatest; they have neither sense of humour nor acting skill. Secondly, the script is biased to that section of Egyptian society represented by El-Beheiri -- a frustrated housewife with two children. The characters of Basma, Ghanem and Abdel-Ghafour, encountered later on in the film -- the unhappy fiancée, the divorced career woman and the dreamy rebel, respectively -- come across as sketchy, by comparison. It is not clear, for example, how or why it is that they need Kareem in decreasing order, as it were: Basma eventually accepts her fiancé; Ghanem accepts the advances of Kareem's cousin, on condition that he shapes up; and Abdel-Ghafour was never interested in a commitment in the first place. The latter, comparable to the Samah Anwar character in El-Degheidi's film, hardly ever appears on the Egyptian screen; regrettably, in including it, Hareem Kareem grants it the least attention, whether in terms of character development or screen time, of all the characters in the film, and one has the sense that it was included simply to enhance variety and bolster up the range of female types. Another drawback of the film is therefore that it is far too calculating to last: four distinct female character types guarantee identification on the part of the vast majority of the audience; but the bets are placed mainly on the lowest common denominator, the already familiar, the dramatically exploited and the comically clichéd, at the expense of further developing the virgin territory of the less acceptable -- the renegades -- thereby effacing the female identity and stunting woman's social role. In the end the moral of the story is put into the mouth of the eldest character of all, the grandmother of Kareem's cousin. An intelligent woman is one who preserves the unity of her family and the continuity of her marriage. Even if the husband is a philanderer who has extra-marital affairs, he will always go back to a wife who is protective of her household. Such valorisation of marriage over the constancy of the husband, a staple of Egyptian drama in general and its comic inflections in particular, acts to reinforce notions of the social norm -- which gives men the licence to pursue every kind of relationship, on the pretext that they are thereby legitimately acquiring experience, while denying women even the right to have a faithful spouse.
