If Romania taught us anything, it is that not every Romanian film should be expected to be a masterpiece. Same goes for Morocco, the newly-appointed leader of Arab cinema. Having produced some of the most accomplished Arab films of last year — Leila Kilani's “On the Edge,” Hisham Lasri's “The End” and Mohamed Asli's “Rough Hands” — expectations skyrocketed to an unreasonable level. Morocco The three Moroccan films screened at the Dubai International Film Festival held last December were a testament to this reality. The most ambitious of the trio was Hakim Belabbes' “Boiling Dreams.” A sparse immigration drama, the film examines the impact left by a departing father attempting to illegally cross into Spain on his wife and children. At the center of the film is one key conceit: Can a story accurately capture the longing, fear and boredom of having a beloved one, the patriarch and backbone of the family, leave his family behind? Belabbes' efforts are quite astute, but he ultimately fails. He juxtaposes the silent agony of the wife and kid with the man's stormy journey at sea, using silent sceneries of the village they inhabit to create a subdued atmosphere of unspoken frustration and doubt. The strategy is intriguing on paper, but it doesn't work in execution. The film wants to be minimalistic, yet it's not minimalistic enough. At the same time, it wants to be powerful, emotional and dramatic, but it's not dramatic enough. “Boiling Dreams” is a confused film, wanting the best of both worlds but ending up with neither. Creating a potent slow cinema requires a special skill and talent, both of which Belabbes sorely lacks. What you eventually end up with is a bad Ming-liang Tsai without the ideas or the flair. Narjiss Nejjar's “The Riff Lover” — which was screened this week at the Berlin Film Fest — is more coherent in its vision, but exceedingly traditional in its themes. “The Riff Lover” is a beautifully photographed pic about a 20-year-old Moroccan girl looking for love and freedom in a repressed society where women's desires are treated with contempt. In other words, it's the same exact story filmed countless times in North Africa. Production values are top-notch; the lush cinematography and wistful landscapes augment the dreamy ambiance of the first half of the film. An expected turn to the melodramatic in the second half tarnishes the mood, as Nejjar struggles to say anything remotely fresh about the ongoing subjugation of women in Arab societies. For the foreign viewer, “The Riff Lover” boasts sufficient exotic elements to justify the price of admission. For the Arab viewer, it's the same tired cry for emancipation we've repeatedly heard before. But no other film matched the sheer awfulness of Abdelhai Laraki's “Love in the Medina,” a saggy coming-of-age story whose every frame reeks of overpowering fakeness. The overbearing plot chronicles the journey of the quiet son of a Casablancan sheikh who breaks away from the family business and discovers sex, independence and more sex. Laraki's film is shot entirely on a stage, including exterior scenes, a major factor contributing to the total lack of believability. The tacky score, plane cinematography, overdramatic performances are perfect ingredients for a parody — except that “Love in the Medina” is not. This is a ridiculous, deplorable yarn of raging hormones and exhausted taboos realized with an uttermost disregard to artistry, good taste or sensibility. The sensationalistic sex scenes made headlines at home, but in reality, all the buzz created around the film is much ado about nothing. Lebanon Lebanese cinema has been growing in prominence in recent years, mainly in the strength of the hugely popular films of Nadine Labaki. The quality of the productions has been somewhat erratic though, ranging from the ingenious (“Ok, Enough, Goodbye”) to the conventional (“Stray Bullet”). Unlike their highly impressive documentary crop, the handful of narrative features from Lebanon screened in the past 14 months shows a cinema in flux, a Civil War-haunted cinema in search of a distinctive style. A good example is Danielle Arbid's much publicized third feature “Beirut Hotel,” which was allegedly banned in Lebanon for tackling the forbidden subject of Rafik Al-Hariri's assassination. The film charts the turbulent affair between a Lebanese hotel singer (TV starlet Darine Hamze) and a French attorney (Charles Berling from Olivier Assayas' “Summer Hours”) over the course of 10 days. A subplot involves the attorney's Syrian associate who claims to know the identity of Al-Hariri's murderer. Borrowing elements of noir and “Last Tango in Paris”-type sex dramas, “Beirut Hotel” has a lot going for it: evocative cinematography, an intoxicatingly mysterious aura and an unconventional romance. Alas, Arbid stretches her story in too many directions that fail to converge, losing focus of the central drama. As intriguing as the romance may be, it doesn't fully convince. The sexual attraction aside, we don't really know what draws the pair to each other or what sustains this affair. Acting, particularly, from Hamze, is mostly stiff, always out of tune with the unfolding drama. The tension simmering beneath the surface ultimately amounts to nothing; the Hariri subplot is too underdeveloped to spur reasonable controversy, emerging as a weak catalyst that fails to enrich the central drama or move it forward. Two more Lebanese films had their world premiere in December — Youcef Joe Bou Eid's “Tannoura Maxi” (Heels of War) and Daniel Joseph's “Taxi Ballad,” both the debut features of their makers. The first is Kusturica-like fable about the unlikely union of the director's father set at the height of the Civil War. The stylistic flourishes — Minnelli-like bright, vivid colors, soaring score and surrealistic humor — make for an attractive if not a compelling view. “Tannoura Maxi” is pure style over substance; a film too in love with itself to produce a bona-fide drama or deliver worthwhile take on war. The second is a whimsical “Cinema Paradiso”-like travelogue of Beirut seen from the perspective of a lonely cab driver who forges a friendship with an American pilates instructor. This lighted-hearted film wears its heart on its sleeve, and it's undeniably charming, earnest and wholeheartedly nostalgic, but it's also somewhat old-fashioned and lacks a much-need punch and vigor. A great Syrian discovery Apart from a handful of the aforementioned Moroccan features, the most exciting revelations in Arab cinema are found in documentaries. In addition to the several non-fiction films mentioned in previous entries of this column, one of the most pleasant surprises of late was Ammar Al-Beik's “Aspirin and a Bullet,” a Syrian art-piece camouflaging itself as a film that is unlike anything I've seen in the region. The film is composed of four interlocking strands: a reading of Robert Bresson's book “Notes on the Cinematographer,” a series of striking video portraits of several art-house filmmakers (Manoel de Oliveira, Pedro Costa, Catherine Breillat, Bernardo Bertolucci and Zhang Ke Jia to name a few), a stream of enforced reminiscences by Al-Beik's reluctant mother and, most amusing of all, a sequence of jaw-dropping anecdotes by a middle-aged man about his awkward romantic trysts in Syria and France. None of these strands have an outwardly tangible relation with the other; none attempt to communicate the past or present reality of Syria; none attempt to make a grand statement about a nation on the cusp of a potential civil war. “Aspirin and a Bullet” is a celebration of the lives and art that shaped the identity of its maker; a fascinating collage of various fragments of memory, of people, places and ideas lying outside the stilted realm of politics. Even when it meanders in parts, even when it borders on the pretentious at times, “Aspirin and a Bullet” remains engrossing and fascinating throughout. The future of Arab fests The great disparity in quality between documentaries and narrative films poses the following question: Why has the transition between the two forms been so difficult for Arab filmmakers? A Jordanian producer faulted the poor quality of education; a Lebanese journalist blamed it on the lack of a strong, authentic pictorial culture; a Palestinian filmmaker believed that non-fiction filmmaking requires a developed set of skills different from TV reportage that most Arab filmmakers are yet to master. Whatever the actual cause (possibly a compound of all these elements), the fact of the matter is the disappointments produced out of the region over the past couple of years far outnumber the gems. Development is slow, inconsistent and not always fruitful. More than any time in history, numerous funds are granted to Arab filmmakers to realize their projects. The current opportunities given to young Arab filmmakers, as limited as they appear to some, are bigger and more generous compared to those offered to their counterparts in several developed countries around the world. Limitations spurred by financial constraints, as in the case of Ibrahim El Batout's remarkable “Hawi,” are accepted; flawed experimentations are welcomed and encouraged. Mediocrity, in my book, is not. With the whole world now attentive to the stories coming out of the Arab world and with the great resources under their disposal, the region's biggest fests can command world attention. The small Arab fests springing up across the globe are delivering Arab films to audiences that filmmakers never thought they could reach, acting as subsidiaries to the big fests in the region and boosting their reputation. Established filmmakers who've proven their worth thus must be supported and heavily promoted while fests must be more selective in their choices. This poses other imperative questions: With the scarcity of good Arab productions? Is it reasonable to have so many Arab fests that continue to clamor over decent Arabic productions? I'm doubtful. As one filmmaker suggested to me, maybe what the region needs now is one main film fest designated to showcase the best films in the Arab world. More fests mean more exposure for filmmakers, more opportunities to finance their films. But if these films are too underdeveloped to deserve finance and screening opportunities, then what's the point? Old fests like Cairo, for instance, will face an uphill battle competing with the big three — Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Doha — and has little chance of reassuming its once prominent position, even under new management. If these fests want to continue existing, they need to think beyond the limited scope of Arab films. Dubai is cementing its reputation as the premiere platform for developing world cinemas while Abu Dhabi is positioning itself as the regional hub for documentaries. The rest, old and new, must follow suit, building a concrete niche for themselves. As for Arab cinema, we're still waiting for the much-heralded breakthrough.
A scene from Hakim Belabbes's Moroccan production “Boiling Dreams.”
