Youssef Rakha enjoys Heneidi's latest The prospect of a new film featuring Mohamed Heneidi is never less than equivocal. While the promise of laughter was fulfilled in, for example, his last feature, Ga'ana Al-Bayan Al- Tali (We Have Received the Following Report), Sahib Sahbu (His Friend's Friend), a collaboration with comedian Ashraf Abdel-Baqi, was mawkish. The link between reality and (cinematic) imagination presents another level of equivocation. On the one hand Heneidi's characters tend to represent a kind of Everyman whose interaction with present-day society, much like the actor's approach to comedy, seems to draw on a variety of relevant issues and timely points of reference. Hammam fi Amsterdam (Hammam in Amsterdam), for example, draws on the phenomenon of emigration, incorporating themes of frustration, corruption and expatriation in the process. Yet on the other hand the complete lack of intellectual import or artistic self-awareness (Heneidi films are hardly intended as works of art or even social commentaries) makes for an ultimately unconvincing view of the world. Plots are staggeringly improbable, motives morally -- if unconsciously -- suspect and what superficial sympathy is mustered derives from sentimental identification. Perhaps it was the commercial failure of Sahib Sahbu that led Heneidi to rediscover the simpler and infinitely more endearing qualities that first helped make his name. Askar f'il- Muaskar (A Soldier in the Camp), the present film -- dedicated to Heneidi's first collaborator and fellow champion of so called new comedy, the late Alaa Walieddin -- is very much a tribute to Se'idi fil-Gam'a Al-Amrikeya (Upper Egyptian at the American University), the hit that within months of its release had almost acquired a cult status. Here, too, Heneidi is the guileless Upper Egyptian struggling to establish himself in the city. Here, too, he is at the centre of a range of complex entanglements from the academic-professional to the amorous- matrimonial. Here, too, he represents Good in conflict with Evil, a fight always resolved in favour of the former, giving rise to the unconvincing happy ending. Written by Ahmed Abdallah, directed by Mohamed Yassin and featuring, among others, Hassan Hosni, the brilliant young comedian Maged El-Kidwani, Liqaa (another young actress) and Salah Abdallah, Askar f'il- Muaskar is at some level in the tradition of the Ismail Yassin fi series of films -- a comedy-star- centred action flick in which the hapless protagonist (an amalgam of the actor's persona and the character) is placed in a specific context, in this case military training at Central Security, intended to give rise to potentially funny complications. In addition to the day-to-day toils of Central Security training, which are drastically downplayed, the film incorporates the theme of the notorious Upper Egyptian vendetta. Ludicrously, Heneidi's closest friend at Central Security, a fellow Upper Egyptian played by Maged El-Kidwani, turns out to be the son of a man his father killed. Action emerges as much from Heneidi's insistence on marrying the girl he loves as from his attempt to escape his former friend's reluctant attempts at killing him. In fleeing his home village, where he hastily gets married under improvised heavy security, and the training camp, and while hiding with his maternal uncle (a history teacher turned cheap cologne-maker and cabaret performer played by Salah Abdallah), Heneidi repeatedly fails to consummate his marriage. Eventually he finds out that it is El-Kidwani's uncle who set off the bloodshed in the first place in order to take over his brother's land; he is intent on El-Kidwani killing Heneidi not for the sake of avenging his brother's death but in order to deprive him, whether through death or trial, from the land he has inherited -- something the uncle, even more ludicrously, admits as he shoots at his nephew when the latter cannot bring himself to kill Heneidi towards the end of the film. While it is impossible to maintain any suspension of disbelief, the film's virtue resides less in the storyline than in Heneidi's consistent performance in a wide range of contexts. Perpetually terrified, ridiculously confident, always on the verge of disenchantment, in Askar f'il-Muaskar Heneidi manages to retrieve the kind of childlike vitality that made Se'idi fil-Gam'a Al- Amrikeya a distinct departure from existing traditions of comedy. Neither dialogue nor dramatic situation is particularly interesting, but Heneidi's expressiveness often is. Unlike Sahib Sahbu, the film does not go out of its way to be different. What little digressions it contains -- Heneidi's trip to a working-class neighbourhood supervising a prisoner who gets a day off to attend his sister's wedding; the life and work of his maternal uncle, who is initially supported by a particularly butch belly dancer; his wife's fascination with Cairo, and her temporary moral "fall" in the hope of improving their financial situation -- do not on the whole undermine the credibility of two hours of light entertainment -- far better fare than viewers might have had reason to expect, but fare, it is hoped, that Heneidi will keep delivering.
