Khaled Al-Khamisy recent literary hit “Taxi opened up those transitory spaces in Egyptian locomotion to an audience of spectators. With the endless episodes that happens inside the cab having proved rich pickings for the recent blossoming literary scene, it was only a matter of time before the film industry flag down a slice of petrol driven pie.
Director Said Hamed’s – of “Saeedi Fel Gama’ Al-Amrikeya – new release “Ala Ganb Yasta (Pull Up, Driver) follows the recent artistic trend of supplanting a macho hero with an average Egyptian. In this film, it is Salah, a good natured taxi driver with an unusually decent sense of style played by Egyptian cinema’s Mr Nice Guy Ashraf Abdel Baqi.
What’s also strange, apart from his shirt and beautiful blue lambs-wool v-neck, is that Salah never seems to haggle with customers, never seems to be underpaid and never wants more than he’s given. What a nice guy – and honestly, do we expect Mr Abdel Baqi to play a different role?
Salah’s taxi driving is his family trade, having inherited it from his father (cue whip out of renewed sepia print featuring mustached man beaming from a driver’s seat). His brother Maraei, played by the fiercely good looking Asser Yassin, is the black sheep of the family, having turned trades from driving to become a notorious thug. While Salah roams the streets looking for punters, Maraei is smashing up stores for men in sharp suits.
Of course, their mother (veteran actress Khaireya Ahmed) is overcome with worry for her truant son, and regularly sends Salah out on early morning missions to find Maraei and bring him home. Salah rarely succeeds, but does, on some eerily coincidental occasions, manage to recognize his younger brother’s swish automobile as it zooms past him, pursued, full sirens blazing, by a police car.
In some nifty automobile moves, Salah’s modest cab takes a full U-turn onto the right hand lane – in a stroke of luck, free of traffic – to block the police car, letting Maraei get away. On another occasion, while on a slow moonlight patrol, Salah spies his brother getting beaten to a pulp at the hands of some vengeful thugs.
With family covered – hero must be doting son, brother and husband – scriptwriters are finally free to turn to romance. Romance! I hear you say, isn’t this guy already married? Yes, yes, it’s a small detail, and besides, Abdel Baqi’s flirtations are clumsier seven-year-itch affections than rapacious Casanova.
The would-be love interest takes the form of strikingly beautiful Nour, played by Arwa – her surname must have got jumbled in the credits – whom Salah picks up on a lonely night. She asks to be taken to the notorious Haram Street whereupon they turn up outside a seedy cabaret packed with unscrupulous characters. Nour then asks Salah to accompany her inside for 10minutes. It’s lucky her driver’s the open-minded Abdel Baqi, and not some bearded galabeyya-clad Hag.
It turns out that Nour has come to demand her greasy gangster ex-brother-in-law return her nephew to her sister. He refuses, of course, and there’s a brief punch-up between Nour – who goes flying through a table unharmed in a Ninja-esque manner – Salah and evil ex-brother in law plus stooges. And so begins Salah’s romantic journey with Nour, whose regular demands for Salah’s chauffeur service become a fixture in his otherwise mundane life.
While sitting in a high class Cairene coffee shop (one never guessed that taxi driving could be such lucrative a profession), Salah compares Nour to his wife (actress Rojeena, Abdel Baqi’s costar in the highly successful comedy series “Yawmeyat Zoug Mo’aser ). His wife is akin to floodlight, bright and overwhelming but also boring, whereas Nour is the spotlight: enigmatic, mysterious, and sexy.
In any other case, such comparison would be incriminating verbal infidelity, but Abdel Baqi exudes such charming innocence he’s instantly forgiven.
“Ala Ganb Yasta seems to fit snugly into the rather idiosyncratic Egyptian genre of, well, anti-genre. It defies categorization not by any experimentalist post-modern attempt to throw audience into a cinematic Bermuda triangle, but more in a desperado directorial initiative to pack in a swath of emotions into one film.
As an audience, we’re thrown all over the place, from some pretty harsh violence to a familial custody case, to elderly mental diseases.
It’s only Abdel Baqi’s rich, so perfectly articulated sing-song tones that place the film firmly in the comedy department; that and the fact it’s peppered with a string of notable comedians.
In fact, Salah’s cab becomes a cameo comedy transit. Comedy great Samir Ghanem’s hysterical performance as a diabetic entrepreneur with a ridiculous accent is a sure highlight. Then there’s Alaa Morsi’s role as a fastidiously pedantic Ibn Khaldoun-quoting geography teacher, who’s heading ‘East South of Cairo;’ and Ahmed Rizq’s brief walk on, or rather, ride on. Rizq plays a grumpy passenger, who demands complete silence throughout the journey; he leaves the cab after less than 30 seconds.
But it’s the swift brushing under the carpet of the aforementioned serious issues, where “Ala Ganb fails. If this was a black comedy, the issues such as violence against women, baltaga (thuggery) as the quick solution for putting someone in their place, child custody and exploitation of the elderly, wouldn’t pose a problem.
But it’s not a black comedy. Social problems are treated with the same sugary escapist mentality since this is, at the end of the day, a comedy. Unless you’re a 14-year-old boy or someone of limited intelligence, the film, like so many modern Egyptian box office hits, will leave a sour taste in your mouth.
Nevertheless, “Ala Ganb has its many saving graces. It’s worth seeing just for Abdel Baqi’s charismatic performance and all too lovable smile – I’ve decided it resembles something between Goofy and a letterbox, but all suggestions are welcome; the aforementioned class comedy cameos and a plethora of great, if not over-indulged, aerial shots of Cairo.
The soundtrack and opening credits are also sure reasons to go and see the film. Hakim’s raspy, energetic bounding accompanies a simulated taxi ride with audience as driver; all you need is a simulated seat and you’d be in Disney-Cairo.
“Ala Ganb Yasta isn’t going to go down in cinematic history, and its modest box-office numbers will probably keep Abdel Baqi away from the silver screen for some time, but it’s a cutesy knocker to beat those Saturday evening blues, that’ll leave you giving you taxi driver an extra pound or two as you beep beep your way home.
