Heavily influenced by transcendental film style and French cinema, Sherif El Bendary’s latest film, “Saat Asari (Siesta) is a shining example of this alternative cinematic style few Egyptian filmmakers have explored.
The film was screened at the Kotob Khan Bookstore in Maadi where El Bendary discussed his film following the screening.
Inspired by a short story by Egyptian writer Ibrahim Aslan, El Bendary used Aslan’s work as a template to create the second part of his film trilogy following “Sabah el Fol (Rise and Shine), his award-winning short starring Hend Sabry.
The trilogy is based on three archetypal characters: the mother, the father and the lover.
Set around a series of contrasting narrative parallels that never seem to intersect, the movie depicts the life of a man, a father on the brink of a mid-life crisis. While the man is physically worn out, his son seems to be “blooming and “growing . El Bendary uses symbolism at the beginning of the film to illustrate this point with an image of sprouting beans, followed directly with that of the aging father looking in the mirror.
The man’s life is weighed down by trivial activities and he is beset by an emotionally flat relationship with his wife and a troubled, almost psychotic, relationship with his son.
The sum, and essence, of the father’s life is exhibited through his incessant search for his neck support and his futile attempt at making coffee. El Bendary stated that he likes utilizing the technique of focusing on seemingly insignificant objects to which one would attach a confused importance or value.
Throughout the film, the father is continually confronted with the fact that his son is taller, richer, and more intimate with his mother. One could not help but feel this eerie sense of shrinking, physically as well as psychologically on the father’s side. The quandary of the father-son relationship and the father’s designated, obligatory central and major role in a patriarchal society represent the heart of the story, from which the actions of the characters are driven.
El Bendary himself clearly identifies with the father’s struggle and crisis. And in a slightly straightforward finish, the father finds the neck support and is finally able to make himself coffee.
The aesthetics of the film are as visually pleasing as they are in his first film “Rise and Shine.
As a director, El Bendary has a sensitive understanding and critical awareness of the major role his setting and framing play for his work. Yet as I watched the film I couldn’t help seeing the middle class bias that seems to permeate most of El Bendary’s work.
The multiple character perspectives and the alternation between vertical and horizontal lining were well used by El Bendary.
When asked about his choice of actors and the dynamics of actor-director relationship, he stated that the actor should not think or know; that the directorial vision is the guiding force behind the creative process.
The young filmmaker particularly chose non-professional actors, reminiscent of great French minimalist Robert Bresson perhaps, to avert possible conflict with professional actors over artistic vision.
El Bendary was clever in his choice of actors. His casting of Salah Marei, the prominent set designer and architect, in the role of the father, film critic Siham Abdel Salam in the role of the mother and Bassem El Samra as the son, was spot on.
Abdel Salam’s eccentric sense of intimacy and humor seems to go very well with Marei’s sense of alienation, and the two’s screen presence gives a realistic, unfinished impression El Bendary succeeded in capturing. El Samra’s easy and practiced sense of timing contrasted a little bit with Marei’s crude performance.
El Bendary’s film has just won the first prize in the Short Film Festival at the Sawy Cultural Wheel this month.
