Of the Eid releases, Hani Mustafa explores one of the the more serious, while Mohamed El-Assyouti revels in the social contradictions generated by one of the more popular Well-known for being anathema to the censors, the work of filmmaker Inas El-Degheidi takes human interest to provocative extremes -- at least in comparison to the vast majority of the popular films now being made. Like it or not, it also offends some social strata, with many viewers failing to distinguish fact from fiction. Daring is frequently identified with immoral, on the other hand, while the aforementioned failing has led to El-Degheidi's own private life being placed under scrutiny -- a price she pays with remarkable nonchalance. In Al-Bahithat an Al-Hurriya (Freedom Seekers), released two weeks ago at the start of the Eid season, El-Degheidi departs from the same principles and poses the same questions -- with the same consequences. The events of the film unfold during 1989, a year during which religious extremism was on the rise in most Arab countries, with personal freedoms, especially of women, suffering as a consequence; this tendency had started two decades before, and the film presents it with uncompromising -- some would say, in-your-face -- directness. Adapted by veteran scriptwriter Rafiq El-Sabban, Hoda Al-Zein's eponymous novel, on which the film is based, tells the story of three Arab girls living in Paris. Amal (Nicole Bardawil) is a Lebanese journalist working in an Arabic newspaper. A complex character, she has suffered the atrocities of the Lebanese Civil War -- militiamen kidnapped her boyfriend Farid right in front of her -- and though not treated in the film, the war acts to justify many of her internal dilemmas. A woman of virtue in the workplace, her private life is full of vice: the viewer watches as she picks up a man at a nightclub and dances provocatively with him before they engage in sadomasochistic sex in a hotel room rented for the purpose by the hour; the scene is inter-cut with scenes from wartime Beirut, with much emphasis on Farid's pivotal kidnapping. Assigned to interview the Paris-residing militia leader Abu Zaatar, a fearsome and powerful character -- her colleague Kamal (Hisham Selim) describes him as "an arms and drugs dealer, the man behind the death of half of the victims of the Civil War" -- Amal soon becomes the object of his desire; and the sordid details of her private life turn out to be well known to his men. A series of violent complications paves the way for her eventually killing the warlord and escaping back to Lebanon, where Kamal, who has been sent there to cover the war, helps her search for Farid, with whom she is reunited after a new series of complications. Aida (Dalia El-Beheiri) is an Egyptian artist on a scholarship. Her success back home has driven her typically chauvinist husband to mistreat her out of jealousy; and when she receives the scholarship he presents her with two choices -- either remain in Egypt to perform her duties as wife and mother, or travel to Paris as a divorcee, alone -- something that continues to undermine her sense of well being despite her success. This is the least considered of the film's three stories. Aida must choose between her lover Omar (Ahmed Ezz), whom she meets at one of her exhibitions in Paris, and her son, whom her husband, back in Cairo, will not even allow to speak to her on the phone. In the end she returns to her son, having promised Omar to sort things out in such a way as to be able to come back and live with him. Suad (Sanaa Mouzian), a singer, is an economically and socially dispossessed Morrocan who has chosen to immigrate to France. In the opening scenes -- the film, it is worth noting, is altogether traditional in structure -- Amal conducts a series of interviews with Arab women living in Paris on video; and Suad is one of them. The scene shifts to Aida's house, where the viewer realises she is friends with Amal: while they watch the video Aida tells Amal that she would like to do a portrait of Suad, whose eyes, she notices, are sad. Gradually Suad's life is revealed: her boss Si Ali is also her lover; he spends two days a week with her in a luxurious apartment he has rented for her and the rest of the week with his wife and children. Their relationship, it turns out, is beset by violence; it turns out that Si Ali is impotent, with the love scenes ending with him breaking into tears in bed -- a detail so ineptly executed it tends to induce laughter unintentionally. Eventually Suad resumes her relationship with a French boyfriend, Roger, after Si Ali leaves her; in the interim she works at a nightclub where the proprietor, Masrour, attempts to rape her. In a dramatically pointless twist that departs from El-Degheidi's provocative intentions, Roger and Suad seal their reconciliation with a recitation of the Fatiha; it turns out that Roger's mother is an Algerian Muslim, and thus Suad's relationship with a Frenchman is not as shocking to Muslims as it might be. The film attempts to interweave too many storylines; subplots like the story of Amal's Sudanese colleague Abdallah, who kills himself towards the end, unable to bear the pressures of racism, act to overcrowd an already busy dramatic plane. So does the naïve scene in which Suad is invited to sing at the house of a rich Arab from the Gulf, who attempts to seduce her. Important questions, on the other hand, are overlooked: how do Kamal and Amal make it up after the latter strikes the former in her house? Nor does the film recreate the 1980s convincingly; fashion, cars, furniture belong in later decades; if not for subtitles specifying the year of the action at the beginning there would have been no temporal clue. Another drawback is the weak photography (shot digitally in parts, the quality of the film fluctuates wildly, and many scenes are outright out of focus) -- puzzling in the light of cinematographer Mohsen Ahmed's experience. Be that as it may, El- Degheidi manages to distance herself despite her humane approach, allowing the viewer to judge the characters for himself. Flickering fortunes The week after the release of Al-Sayed Abul-Arabi Wisel (Al-Sayed Abul-Arabi Made It), Mustafa Kamel Mohamed, governor of Port Said, honoured comedian Hani Ramzi for his portrayal of a hilarious Portsaidi -- which had people flocking to cinemas throughout the country during the Eid holidays -- as well as the film's writer, producer and director. A few days later, Mohamed and members of the city council banned the film in Port Said; those members who happen to be lawyers also filed a suit to ban the film all over Egypt. Scriptwriter Tareq Abdel-Gelil, producer Kamel Hassan Abu Ali and director Mohsen Ahmed were consequently summoned to the prosecutor -- a misfortune that left out Ramzi for some reason. Such confusion is typical, at least when it comes to a film, play or television drama that has some bearing on reality: an unwritten rule dictates that the entertainment business should stay as far away as possible from the life of the audience, provoke as little thought as possible and remain as shallow and superficial as possible; it must never undermine the status quo. Thus when he plays a corrupt lawyer -- as in Raafat El-Mihi's Al- Avocato (The Advocate, 1982) -- Adel Imam manages to upset lawyers; yet when his jokes address misogynist, homophobic, even racist sentiments, no one complains. Ramzi, and Mohamed Heneidi before him, had got away with stereotyping the Saedi (Upper Egyptian); why should the Portsaidi prove more problematic? One possible answer is that a relatively serious message seems to underlie the film -- something that makes it look like Abul-Arabi might actually be questioning the social-political norm. Ramzi is unique among new-wave comedians in that he insists on his scripts dealing with issues of some social or political import, favouring al-fan al-hadif (directed art) over mere entertainment -- a taxi driver who actively seeks out his share of public funds ( 'Ayiz Haqi or I Want My Right), a junior employee who insists that the president should attend his wedding ( Gawaz bi- Qarar Gumhouri or Marriage by a Presidential Decree). In Abul-Arabi he plays the eponymous stereotype at the centre of many jokes about Portsaidis (Abul-Arabi being the moniker of Sayed, a common name), for like the Saedi, the Portsaidi (well-known for his propensity to boast of personal accomplishments, especially connections with the authorities) is readily available raw material for comedy. And it is on this fact that Ramzi relies in the present film. It is possible -- in my view, necessary -- to see new- wave comedy as a regression to the second-rate films of the 1970s and 1980s -- otherwise known as aflam al- muqawalat (subcontractors' films, a reference to their mode of speedy budget production and their being released straight on video targeting the lucrative markets of the Gulf) -- which spawned the stars of the 1980s and 1990s. A similar logic operates today -- except that the comedies in question are released at Gulf-style movie multiplexes before they find their way to VCD, DVD and satellite TV -- a bigger market than that of two decades ago. Thus Abul-Arabi : a hodgepodge of half-baked ideas, with very little thought given to either the material at hand or the manner of presenting it, all with the object of producing a Portsaidi version of the down-and-out, jobless antihero -- Ahmed Helmi played the Alexandrian version in Saye' Bahr (Sea Tramp) last year, and Mohamed Saad the Cairene and perhaps the original version two years before in Al-Limbi. Abdel-Gelil's script, in fact, amounts to little more than a duplication of the most successful comedies of the past seven years, with enough room left for the actors (for which read Ramzi) to improvise. Audience members not initiated into the recent upsurge of music videos, or those not familiar with the antics of new-wave comedians, are in fact likely to feel excluded. The film is the story of Abul-Arabi's rise from tramp to millionaire; and in this context it is worth remembering veteran star Ahmed Zaki's comment that the story of a climb up the social ladder makes for a sure box-office hit. A truck-load of whisky Abul- Arabi attempts to smuggle out of Port Said (a duty- free zone) is confiscated after he is betrayed to the police by his professional and amorous rival Maati (Salah Abdallah ); he is inexplicably released and, preposterously, pays the owners LE200,000 in bad cheques. He then has his revenge, framing Maati for drug dealing by placing some white powder in his store, persuading the police that it is heroin. The rivals eventually make it up: Abul-Arabi suggests that Maati should pay the lawyers in bad cheques to have the powder analysed to prove it is not heroin, and to procure money for both of them he boards a ship to Greece, where a friend named Nour owes Maati money, entering the country illegally. In Greece, conveniently, he meets a half-Arab belle; she and her father help him seek out Nour. And the romantic interest aside, the resulting string of events gives way to a complex alibi in which Nour and Maati conspire against Abul-Arabi, then Nour and Abul-Arabi conspire against Maati. On his return to Port Said Abul- Arabi is a millionaire, having cheated Maati of LE800,000, but by then the latter has managed to be affianced to Abul-Arabi's girlfriend -- again, through a warped financial arrangement with her father. So Abul- Arabi pays Maati money, settling all accounts, and marries the love of his life in return. Towards the end Abul- Arabi is a successful businessman eager to invest in his hometown and employ its youth, and the governor, who had barely accepted his plea for a subsidised flat, now offers him a whole building in which to house his employees -- a comment on how investors are pampered while the average citizen is perpetually ignored. Endeavouring to operate in a range of registers -- romantic, melodramatic, musical as well as comic -- the film drags somewhat, and the editing leaves many sequences disjointed. There are too many inconsistencies: Ramzi poking fun at a man in drag, then dressing up as a woman to seduce an adversary. More fundamental is the fact that, though archenemies, Abul-Arabi and Maati continually fall for each other's unintelligent tricks (the ticks and tricks of the average Tom and Jerry cartoon will generally reveal greater ingenuity), betraying an incredible gullibility. And though "funny" gestures and facial expressions suggest that they are mentally challenged -- something that might help justify such stupidity -- the fact is never acknowledged by any other character in the film. Performances are inadequate, with the actors playing the least impressive versions of themselves, having failed to master the Portsaidi accent. Wahid Seif, for example, does his trademark head shaking and voice raising, with which he has ended his lines on both stage and screen for the last 30 years; and, watered down, predictable, they induce hardly any laughter in a full house. Menna Shalabi tried hard, but her character -- typically of the females in new-wave comedies -- is so terribly underwritten, so secondary to the principal plot developments, that she could do little with it. Mohsen Ahmed is a top cinematographer whose years of experience include films, music videos and commercials that have earned him an excellent reputation, yet in his directorial debut his weak grasp of dramatic development and failure to guide the actors is all too clear. Following in the footsteps of Tareq El-Telmissani and Said El-Shimi, cinematographers who directed a film each, Ahmed has announced that this will be his last venture into directing.
