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Al-Ahram Weekly 6 - 12 May 1999 Issue No. 428 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 6 - 12 May 1999 Issue No. 428
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Profile Features Special Focus Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Dresses to die for
By Khairiya El-Bishlawi
Commercial cinema continues to be plagued by raucous and obvious messages and the shallow politicking of Amn Dawla (State Security), currently showing in movie theatres, is no exception. In fact the latest Nadia El-Guindi vehicle is to all intents and purposes indistinguishable from its predecessors -- Asr Al-Qowwa (Times of Power), Mohemma fi Tal Abib (A Mission in Tel Aviv) and Tamania wa Arbein Sa' a fi Isra' il (48 Hours in Israel). It is as unconvincing in both form and content, the script as repetitious and tedious, the characters and plot the same.
It is almost inevitable that such films seem old even as they are released. Nor do they succeed in actually conveying the political messages they set out to convey. Their one success appears to be an uncanny ability to attract large audiences for the formula, whatever its political pretensions, never manages the break with light entertainment.
Amn Dawla tells the story of state security officer Kamal (played by Mahmoud Hemeida) who tries to place a criminal, a woman already facing a death sentence, within a terrorist group in an attempt to monitor its activities. The group, which operates from outside Egypt, is financed from several sources, including Israel.
The woman, selected largely because of the hopelessness of her own situation and her striking resemblance to the wife of the leader of the terrorists, has her sentence suspended and embarks on a rigorous training course involving the use of firearms, combat, computer literacy, learning a foreign language and diving, in addition to minor plastic surgery to improve her complexion.
Samiha (Nadia El-Guindi) is an unlikely heroine. She is, after all, a murderer, sentenced to 60 years in prison even before she commits the murder that earns her a death sentence.
Amn Dawla, like its predecessors, is tailored around its star. And while this should not automatically disqualify the film as a piece of entertainment the unfortunate fact is that its star has failed to select a storyline that might make use of her acting skills, preferring, instead to focus on the more physical aspects of the role. And while it is true that, in the face of advancing years Nadia El-Guindi has retained her glamour, this has been achieved largely by abandoning anything that might resemble realism, in favour of playing super-human characters capable, it seems, of anything and everything.
In this film the heroine is intended to personify a stereotyped femininity as well as toughness. She is adventurous, shuttling between Paris, Cyprus, Switzerland, Israel, Greece and Afghanistan, popping up wherever terrorism is present, and fighting her enemies above the ground and under the water. Swimming-suits and diving gear jostle for our attention with a unique wardrobe containing the most elegant designer outfits. Lovesick and abandoned, our heroine is nevertheless strong enough to settle the score with those who violated both her country and her body and the film crawls with scenes of rape, action and passionate love.
The actual script represents a less successful piece of tailoring than many of the star' s outfits. In underlining the transformation of the criminal into a national heroine it adopts an embarrassing symmetry, contrasting the first scene of Samiha being dragged away to her execution with a final scene in which she is embraced by the officer from state security following her violent rape by Murad (played by Yasser Galal), the leader of the terrorists, one of the few incidents that the director deigns to portray realistically.
Murad and Samiha had earlier fallen in love unaware of each other' s real identity. He had no idea she was a police infiltrator while she thought he was a businessman living in Paris, suffering from the personal tragedy which he discloses during one of their amorous evenings. Had she known that he was "the man responsible for the bombings which killed the children of the May Flower School and the honest police officers there to do their job she would have murdered him a thousand times over."
The terrorists are themselves a motley crew of stereotypes: Mohamed Mukhtar contrives to make his character dull by dint of bad acting, while Youssef Fawzi gets a chance to play the psychologically unstable terrorist and Khalil Morsi the cruel and calculating one. And to establish that terrorism has no basis in religion the script accommodates the presence of a good man of religion, Al-Sheikh Wahba (played by Ali Hassanein), a superfluous character on any other level.
Although a big budget production by Egyptian standards the bulk of the money appears to have been spent on the action sequences. Scenes in Paris, on the other hand, appear to have been filmed in the banqueting room of an army club at nominal expense. Few corners have been cut, though, when it comes to the star' s make-up and wardrobe, which includes a great many hats. And in the end it is the clothes that come to dominate the action with several scenes structured around the outfits, or else included to highlight the revealing possibilities of the garments. Such exposure is, of course, par for the course in show business though moderation remains a blessing.
