3 - 9 May 2001
Issue No.532
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 3 - 9 May 2001 Issue No.532 |
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Matrimony of extremes
Khairiya El-Bishlawi finds marriage and divorce equally unpalatable in Yamin Talaq
Film-maker Ali Abdel-Khaliq's Yamin Talaq (Divorce Oath) contrives a cinematic marriage of art and lies. As a reflection on social decay the script fails to deliver even a modicum of truth about issues as central as marriage, divorce and family life, opting instead for a lurid display of corruption depicted for the sake of commercial imperatives that leave reality more, rather than less, unscathed. Make no mistake -- it is not as if the moral dissolution depicted by the film does not have its counterpart in present-day Egyptian society: rather, the film's professed purpose, to tackle the issue of divorce and its negative impact on the middle class, is largely ignored, while cheap commercial appeal is doggedly emphasised throughout.
Abdel-Khaliq has produced less spurious work in the course of his career. At this juncture, though, it seems commercial considerations have overruled those of artistic integrity.
In much the same way as the "message" of the film is reduced to a mere affectation, the story line is little more than a pretext for the dogged regurgitation of commercial cinema's less appealing aspects. A lone woman with a child (Taysir Fahmi) has just been widowed or divorced: this, along with many other narrative details, remains unclear. Staying with a family whose patriarch is known for his inability to resist temptation, she becomes, predictably, the subject of his desire. As soon as he makes a move, she is ready to oblige, but her unrealistic willingness is moderated by the fact that she insists that their relationship be halal rather than haram (ie, she will not consent to his advances unless they are married).
Equally unrealistically, the man instantly abandons his wife and child to marry her. The only explanation the film offers for this is that he is weak-willed. The title of the film refers to the oath with which he finally divorces his wife in order to start a life with the newcomer; it is also a common (sexist) expression of determination, in this case to make the proposed union halal (ie, religiously right) and thus attain the object of his desire.
Both man and woman are supposed to be "ordinary" middle-class people, yet the viewer remains ignorant of their background and education. And the discrepancies between their social standing and frequently shocking behaviour further complicates the suspension of disbelief: their wiliness, the intensity of their sexual impulses and their lack of concern for their children (particularly in the case of the woman, who until very recently had been a respectable wife and mother) are only part of the evidence for this. And when the man's son begins to bully the woman's in the playground (they both attend the same school), Abdel-Khaliq's sudden display of concern for the destructive effects of divorce seems somewhat out of place.
That this is so is largely a result of the fact that the brief sequence with which the film opens immediately presents the viewer with the vapid incarnation of sex which is now a leitmotif in almost every commercial theme -- the tawdry treatment of desire being the producer's favourite tool to lend a film a commercial edge. As soon as he enters the home of his newly acquired "family," while still in the presence of the woman's son, the man is determined to put his plan into action. And against the trademark backdrop of food, narcotics, revealing costumes and the belly-dancing ritual supposed to lead up to sex, the woman reveals a distasteful familiarity with what is expected of her, as well as a slightly more convincing sexual yearning of her own. This is the only kind of entertainment that is attempted.
Here, as elsewhere, film-maker and actors seem to relish the thought of titillating and shocking their audience, and with no deeper object in mind. The notion of womanhood is reduced, quite crudely, to a laboured, cliched and contrived conception of feminine allure. This applies equally to another divorcee, played by belly-dancer and actress Fifi Abdou, whose network of relations (including the younger prostitute played by Shadia Abdel-Hamid) comprises a disappointingly superficial vision of the criminal underworld, particularly its younger generations, and to the school girl (Nour Qadri) whose behaviour reflects the same kind of family problem prodded elsewhere in the film. Sexual or not, the film's vision of social decay is not only coarse but ultimately repulsive. Teeming with stereotypes and cliches, it lacks the artistic framework within which it might make sense.
Its weak structure and narrative garrulousness aside, Yamin Talaq fails, too, as a form of escapism. Its constant, if spurious, concern with society and the fact that it has a message to deliver combine to keep the viewer too close to reality to abandon it altogether. The script juxtaposes the staples of cheap commercialism with a half-baked view of recent social developments and a self-righteous commentary on the younger generation, members of whom are spiritually and intellectually bankrupt. Yet in depicting corruption and decay Yamin Talaq merely becomes part of the general demise, perpetuating rather than illuminating the social malaise it sets out to tackle. In this context both marriage and divorce turn into a form of obscenity; and so, alas, does cinema.
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