Hot cinematic trio deliver Egypt s first fine entertainment of the year
Cairo: So you’ve had one of the biggest hits of the year, received tremendous critical acclaim from the hard-to-please Egyptian critics and your film crew is on course to become an Egyptian cinematic powerhouse.
What would you do next? Easy, make a comedy that contains none of the elements that made your last film so popular and valued.
Hot off their still unbelievable success of the social revenge Drama Wahed Men El Nas (One of the People), scriptwriter Bilal Fadly, director Ahmed Galal and Egypt s new golden boy actor Karim Abdel Aziz reunite six months later, along with Wahed actress Menna Shalaby, to deliver the hilarious Fi Mahatet Masr (In Cairo Station), the best film of the current heavy weighted Eid releases.
Cairo Station opens with a montage of a very modest bedroom filled with novels by classic Egyptian writers Saadallah Wanous and Gamal Al Ghitani on its shelves, and walls covered by Britney Spears and Shakira posters that initially establishes the contradictions of the protagonist s life.
The bedroom s owner is Reda (Abdel Aziz), a faculty of commerce graduate, and a former college theater actor, who, like many members of his generation, wasn t able to find a proper job and ended up selling kitchen lighters.
His father is an ordinary government employee who raises hell every day for his wife’s and son s negligence to firmly close the refrigerator door. His mother is the archetypal weeping Egyptian matriarch whose incapability of regarding her life in a slightly positive or bright manner drives her son mad.
The family find themselves in a tight spot after discovering that Reda s dad hasn t paid the refrigerator’s installments and the cops are to imprison his son unless he pays his debts.
Reda figures out that the only solution to his unfortunate family s problems is to sell a bunch of expensive discounted coupon catalogues to first class passengers of Cairo s train station.
He meets Dalia a beautiful, rich and highly educated young woman recently dumped by her college professor boyfriend and forced to marry a rich acquaintance of her father’s for purely economical reasons.
Dalia, later on, convinces Reda to play the role of her new husband in order to avert her planned arranged marriage and introduces him to her conservative family to disastrous consequence.
As mentioned, the film has nothing in common with the heavy drama of Wahed; in fact, in a side-splitting scene, the film parodies it.
The film is a built on a story that s greatly unoriginal ( Shane meets The Inspector General with some ideas borrowed from Paosolini s Teorema ) and the few obligatory morals and positive messages the film carries at the end might have cornered it into the loathed dungeons of formulaic Egyptian romantic comedies the audiences are beginning to avoid.
Nevertheless, these flaws are minor shortcomings overshadowed by a film with restrained direction from Galal that s every bit as good as the slightly overrated Wahed.
The brilliance of the film lies in its small details and spontaneous humor delivered naturally and effortlessly by Abdel Aziz s down-on-his-luck hunk.
The smartly designed comical set pieces, unlike the majority of Egyptian comedies, function perfectly in the context of the drama with obvious homage to Egyptian classics like Shey Min El Khouf (Some Kind of Fear) and Ghazl El Banat (Flirtation of Girls).
In addition, the vast green scenery of the countryside of Kafr El Shiekh is spellbindingly beautiful and central to the storylines.
Script writer Bilal Fadl, a political columnist in the El-Destour paper, said, in the press conference that followed the film s screening in the Journalists Syndicate, that Reda is influenced by a young graduate he met a few years ago during a cultural seminar who found his way out of employment through selling lighters.
The trio, aiming at producing more than one film a year, distinctive in tone, technique and subject, found in Cairo Station a deserving, worthy follow-up to their last collaborative effort.
The film is soaked from its head to toe in the Egyptian spirit, touching swiftly on social topics such as unemployment; the irony of social injustice, the continuing feudalism in small, agricultural governorates, absurdity of parliament elections and impotency of Egypt s educational systems.
Overall though, this is, at the end of the day, an entertaining flick, well-crafted and superior to most, if not all, recent comedies. This is the first time in a long period where I actually enjoyed watching an Egyptian film, despite its expected predictability.
The social subtext gives the film more depth, believability and even enhances the comedy and the relationships between characters. It s not self-important and it doesn t want to be.
It doesn t carry any important messages, yet no one can dismiss the film as being trivial or inferior to other dramas.
The trio s next project is a TV series; judging by the success of their last three films, Egyptian drama might finally be on the road of recovery, fueled by an unlikely source indeed.
