A tart with a heart

From the word go, we know that the hero's search for the aunt will take some comic turns. Asked about his destination, he tells the taxi driver: "My aunt's place." His aunt, he informs the driver, owns a hospital and spends her money helping the poor. She is charitable.

Or is she? The taxi journey continues and Abdel-Aziz is soon deposited at the address written on the sheet of paper he carries. He asks the bawab who had been praying about Flat 18. The bawab ignores him and proceeds to pray some more. His enquiry about Flat 18 from a resident of the building provokes more strange behaviour -- this time, indignation. Flat 18, we soon discover, is a house of ill-repute, is indeed a brothel-cum-gambling den.

We discover this, but not Abdel-Aziz. Contrary to the all too obvious signs, Abdel-Aziz is determined to believe that the aunt he is seeking is the sweet charity worker he believes her to be. Initially flabbergasted that his aunt should own pornographic videos, Abdel-Aziz is desperate enough to make the image in his head correspond to what lies before his eyes that he interprets this phenomenon as his aunt's way of dealing with psychological diseases from which her patients may be suffering.

The stage for the classic comedy of confused identities -- one which became very popular in 1950s Egyptian theatre -- has been set. Indeed, the plot of Sit El-Sittat will circle around the comic gap between, on the one hand, the image of the blessed Aunt Fakiha who, Abdel-Aziz wishfully insists, lives in flat 18 and, on the other, the actual occupant of the premises, the ill-reputed Bassant (played by Magda El-Khatib).

Bassant herself has much to gain by the naive hero's misconceptions. The LE500,000 he has saved up over the years toiling in Saudi make playing Aunt Fakiha to his Nephew Returning to the Family Bosom an attractive prospect indeed. Being Aunt Fakiha -- even if Bassant has already thrown the facts of who she is and what she does in Abdel-Aziz's face -- becomes a necessary survival strategy when the police burst into the flat and arrest everyone, Abdel-Aziz included, and occupy the premises. If Bassant is indeed Abdel-Aziz's Aunt Fakiha, then she cannot possibly be Bassant who runs a brothel. Or so runs the line of reasoning that her ex-husband lawyer (played by Hassan Hosni) tries to pursue to get her out of jail.

In jail Bassant, aided and abetted by Maamoun, her friend, a big shot employee at the IMF (played by Ali Hassanein) try to re-convince Abdel-Aziz of the illusions he had harboured earlier concerning Bassant/Aunt Fakiha's real identity. The psychological pressure which the duo exert on the naive protagonist is translated visually in the film into a self-consciously fantastical scene which makes deliberate reference to, and satirises, melodrama. The prison ceiling opens wide, revealing a star-lit sky and, for good measure, two doves (symbolising Abdel-Aziz's mother and her sister Fakiha) perched side by side.

Lying seems to be the underlying construct of the screenplay: Bassant pretends to be Abdel-Aziz's aunt, once because she wants his money and the second time because if her lawyer proves that she is in fact Fakiha, and not Bassant, the court ruling will become invalid. The next lie occurs when her lawyer threatens to reveal her secret to the police (should she not comply with his terms concerning Abdel-Aziz's money) and she threatens, in return, to disclose his lack of qualifications as a professional lawyer to the authorities.

The peak of deceit takes place when Abdel-Aziz confesses his not having an aunt named Fakiha in the first place, that his entire story is contrived from a friend of his who lives abroad and who never stops talking of his aunt and of his disjointed family. Abdel-Aziz, who always missed having a family, had adopted his friend's story as his own, leaving the spectators to the conclusion that the only genuine, honest character who is not after Abdel-Aziz's money -- and who doesn't lie -- is actually the prostitute (played by Laila Oloui), whose only hope is to marry him.

Resorting once more to ridicule of classical styles, the scene of Abdel-Aziz's confession to Laila Oloui parallels melodramatic scenes from the 40s and 50s, as the camera captures them from behind a window on a rainy night. Teasing the spectators' familiarity with such scenes is, obviously, an easy attempt at drawing them in.

As the plot unravels, the film seems to be sliced in two halves: the first beginning with Abdel-Aziz's arrival at Bassant's house, which includes most of the comic situations. The second begins with Bassant's arrest following Abdel-Aziz's decision to convert her brothel into a tourist pension. However, as he discovers that Bassant continues to practice the same profession, he flees the pension with Laila Oloui shortly before the police descend.

At the very end of the film he realises that he mistook the "aunt's" address, believing it to be number 81 when it was actually 18. Thus ends the film; quite a modest one. The main difference between the two halves is the amount of comic material, as well as the relatively quick cinematic pace of the first opposed to the second.

Despite El-Mihi's occasional resort to traditional comic themes, his films, nevertheless, regularly introduce a new cinematic flavour thanks to his consistent integration of fantasy into his screenplays.

Sit El-Sittat, although weaker than previous El-Mihi productions, does not look amiss in Studio 13's -- Raafat El-Mihi's production company -- back catalogue.