Hani Mustafa reviews Kamla Abu Zikri's new film, One Zero While some films rely on a tightly constructed script, with the dramatic construction determined by the script writer alone, others, perhaps most nowadays, does away with story line as such. Instead, the director and the script writer follow a number of characters through a string of situations which, taken together, give form to a convincing whole. The latter is the technique of films such as Magnolia, which earned the director Paul Thomas Anderson The Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival in 2000, and (though applied to very different subject matter) Gomorra by the Italian director Matteo Garrone, which won the Jury Award at the Cannes Film Festival last year. Nor is this technique entirely new to Egyptian cinema. In fact it was employed only last year in Ahmed Abdalla's first non-comedic script, Cabaret, directed by Sameh Abdel-Aziz. Yet in Egyptian the different strands of narrative tend to be woven more closely together, to satisfy an audience still keen on unity in some form. One Zero, too, is that kind of film, using a script that does not so much tell a story as play with a group of characters through time. It is a mosaic, with each constituent element comprising its own story; each character has her own story, in other words, and they are brought together by means other than a single unifying plot. Written by Mariam Naoum, the script depends on a chain of events proceeding in parallel lines. The film starts with a number of opening scenes, each seeming to trigger off a different story, but the purpose is to provide the viewer with essential information about the characters. Yet it is while following the development of the stories that we really find out about these characters and understand who they are and what they are doing -- a process that proves impressively seamless. First of all there is a man called Ragab (Lutfi Labib), who works as a valet and lives with his grandson in a working class neighbourhood; we later finds out that he is also a hashish dealer. Ragab provides the humorous dimension of the film, which manifests in the details of the cat-and-mouse relationship between Ragab and his grandson. At the beginning, the boy steals a large chunk of hash from his grandfather to sell to the driver he assists -- but by the time he offers his services as a dealer (to a young man already established in the trade, and not his grandfather), the young man in question has been set up and is arrested then and there -- just as Ragab's grandson is about to close the deal. The second strand of narrative concerns Riham (Nelly Karim), a nurse who wears hijab. Her job is to go from house to house to give people injections. We witness her suffering as she is harassed by the men in her street and neighborhood, despite her conservative dress, but we do not realise the extent of her dilemma until we find out that her sister is Nana (Zeina) is a singer who performs provocatively in music video. Nana appears to have entered the world of performance through an intimate relationship with her director and producer (Hussien Al Imam), who profits from the provocative videos she makes as well as having an affair with her. He has turned her into a star, but in exchange she has had to give up everything including her honour and dignity. The third character (Intissar) is a hairdresser- turned-visiting beautician, who offers her services to women at home. Her son Adel also works as a hairdresser, at someone else's shop, and he wants to start his own business. On the way to achieving his dream, we find out, the son makes a few mistakes. But the most controversial character in the film is Nivine (Elham Shahine), a Coptic woman who wants (and cannot get) a divorce. At the start of the film we feel her anxiety when she finds out she is pregnant. Shahine is able to convey the range of her emotions through her eyes alone -- going from happiness to confusion to anxiety. (The most controversial part of this story is the conversation she has with her lawyer, in which he advises her to either covert to Islam or sue the church.)This was the cause of many social and legal issues preceding the film's release. One Christian lawyer sued the film makers for defaming Christianity, but the court rejected the suit. As usual this only resulted in more viewers. The film lays out the legal implications in a conversation between Nevine and her lawyer -- who tells her that the church has refused to allow her to remarry while permitting her ex-husband to do so, since it was her who asked for the divorce and "separated that which God has united". Nevine is having an affair with the famous TV personality Sherif Wagdy (Khaled Abu El Naga) and they live together. *** To cater to viewers unused to narrative strands remaining separate and eager for something still vaguely classical, Naoum had to draw the stories together somehow. She therefore exerted her imagination to tie the stories together using every means at her disposal, fair and unfair. Riham just happens to know Nevine, Sherif hosts Nana in one of his shows to make fun of her. Adel appears to have been Nana's boyfriend. Less convincingly -- creating weak points in the drama -- when Sherif runs over Ragab's grandson, Riham happens to have been arrested for public indecency with her new boyfriend and she is taken to the same police station that Sherif happens to be in; then she has to call Nevine to bail her out. But such exertion may not have been necessary since there already is a line tying all this together: the 2008 Africa Cup between Egypt and the Cameroon. Like most football loving nations, Egyptians will forget their problems while watching a football match; for their favourite team to win, let alone their national team, becomes the true objective for Egyptians no matter how much tragedy they are facing and irrespective of their class or creed. Director Yousri Nasralla also used an important football match as the significant event that ties together all the dramatic themes in his film Mercedes : the 1990 World Cup final. The remarkable effort that went into the film comes through in many dramatic and technical details. Director Kamla Abu Zikri and editor Mona Rabia manage to maintain the tempo as they move between the different story lines while preserving the progression of the story. The cinematography is also powerful, with cinematographer Nancy Abdel Fatah balancing beauty with realism across the streets of the crowded Cairo, without overly artificial lighting. Handheld camera movements reflect the fast pace of cuts, which works beautifully. Less admirable are the fight and argument scenes, which are repetitive and damaging to otherwise impressive acting from Ahmed El-Fishawy, Nelly Karim and Khaled Abul Naga. Many secondary characters produced outstanding performances, including the role of the sandwich seller who likes Reham and goes to meet her by the Nile. He was simple and romantic did not overact even in the scene in which he argues with the policeman. Naoum should be admired for the structure of the drama but many of the stories lack explanatory detail. Adel's boss, for example, slanders his mother -- something Adel refers to in a subsequent argument with her, but it is not at all clear what she is accused of. In another scene the mother is harassed by a man in the bus, or maybe not. Here too the script is very ambiguous. Yet when all is said and done, the relationship between Nevine and Sherif is the weakest link in the film. Perhaps it was included only to court controversy? By Hani Mustafa
