CAIRO - Directors have their own individual style when it comes to conveying their messages. They can make use of metaphors, all sorts of analogies, allusions, camera perspectives, and so on. Some are subtle and some are not, but when it comes to Khaled Youssef's latest snooze-fest “Kaf el-Qamar” (The Moon's Palm), his “subtleties” are like those used to flog a dead horse. From the first minute on screen, we learn that the meaning of the film's name and overarching “symbolic element” is that Qamar, played here by Wafa Amer, is the single mother of five boys. So they are her palm, her hand, and she even counts them on their fingers at one point just to really demonstrate what the film-makers wanted the hand to represent. The film is told mostly through flashbacks. The first half of the film chronicles how Qamar's five children grow up, and how her husband was killed. She has to become everything to them, and teach everything about life, but eventually they want to leave for the big city to better their futures. They all head to the city, led by their big brother “Zekri”, played by Khaled Saleh, Yassin (Haytham Ahmed Zaki), Bakr (Hassan el-Radad) Jouda (Sabri Fawaz), and Dahi (Yasser el-Masry). The film follows them in the city while they find love in all the wrong places, as they work as weapon traders and drug dealers. The brothers eventually go their separate ways. Meanwhile, back with Qamar, she is getting sick all the time, especially with that hand of hers, and is eventually is on her deathbed in the final act of the film. The eldest son must track down all of his brothers, A.K.A. the rest of the ‘palm', which sends us through another endless series of flashbacks that couldn't be more contrived. The acting in the film is what it is. Ghada Abdel-Raziq is a good crier, so there is that. Khaled Saleh plays with his tone of voice is much as he can, and it's fine, but been there done that. Overall though, there were really no outstanding performances in the film. Wafa Amer should have been, and her acting was indeed fine – but it was just fine, nothing amazing. It didn't help that her “old lady” makeup just made her look like an old Geisha: it was just white face powder and completely wrinkle-free; they must have excellent Botox in the area in Upper Egypt where her character comes from! Horaya Farghali, a great rising star, wasn't even on screen long enough to stick, nor did she have any significant character development for you care about her. The complete disappointments, which is sad to say but was to be expected, was Haytham Ahmed Zaki, who seemed so uncomfortable the entire time, and Jumana Murad, specifically in the case of the latter, her acting was incredibly bland, and it's hard to do bland when you're trying to be seductive, but she did it. Khaled Youssef's mode of operation is all the same here as in his previous films, which is to say poor people being poor and miserable. Nothing is new; maybe you might come in expecting the degree of how bad the film is changed or a surprisingly decent performance here or there, but it's all the same. The same style of editing is used again, for example. This editing doesn't help, and indeed it never does when the editing is done by Ghada Ezz el-Din – i.e. it couldn't be worse. Regardless of whoever made the decisions, ultimately the fault rests on Khaled Youssef's shoulders. Most of the transitions were awkward, long and meaningless. Even the ones that had any meaning were belittled by their overuse. Again, Khaled Youssef uses that same sort of melodramatic music score so he can wring some kind of emotional reaction out of people. The thing is that no matter much you pile on the sad music, it's not effective when accompanied by bad acting and storyline. If anything, it makes the film seem cheesy, or worse, unintentionally comical. As I briefly touched on before, in terms of storyline, this is again another movie from Khaled Youssef about poor people being poor. While it is definitely important to highlight the struggles of the vast amount of poor living in Egypt, this doesn't apply to Khaled Youssef. First of all, this is because he doesn't know how to pull them off, and as a result, they end up coming off as ridiculously melodramatic and patronising. Secondly, pretty much every single movie Khaled Youssef makes is about poor people, like “Hena Maysara”,”Dokkan Shehata”, “Kallimny Shokran” and “Kaf al-Qamar”. Is this the only kind of movie he knows how to make? It's almost tiring reviewing a Khaled Youssef film, because I always have the same issues with his films, which could be considered admirable on his part that he really sticks to his convictions regardless of how un-cinematic they might be. Of course, that still doesn't make them good movies.
