Reviewing three representative examples, Al-Ahram Weekly takes stock of recent holiday releases
Women in the house
By
Sonali Pahwa
Hobb Al-Banat (Girls' Love) offers a simpler take on love than scriptwriter Tamer Habib's earlier Sahar Al-Layali (Sleepless Nights), and its light-hearted appeal is well-timed for the holidays. Once again, the film presents a range of relationships, the loves of three very different half-sisters. But it also portrays the growing bond between the sisters who have grown up apart, and only come to live together in order to inherit under the terms of their late father's will. The film fits oddly well into the genre of the date movie, as well as of the chick flick.
The oldest of the sisters, Nada (Leila Elwi), is the most devoted to her father and determined to bring the family together as he had wanted. She lavishes affection, mainly through her cooking, on her disgruntled sisters Ghada (Hanan Turk) and Ruqaiya (Hana Shiha). Ghada is an angry young woman who has never forgiven her father for abandoning her mother (Sawsan Badr, characteristically elegant in an accomplished cameo role). Ruqaiya, the youngest sister, is somewhat sunnier, but also impatient with the demands of her father's will and itching to get back to London where she grew up.
It turns out that family meals are not enough to produce family feeling, but Nada finds an unexpected ally in the goofy psychiatrist who has set up a clinic next door and watches the sisters through his blinds. Muheeb (Ashraf Abdel-Baqi) is endearingly nosy about his neighbours, more of a good Samaritan than a peeping Tom. He offers the sisters the benefit of his psychological wisdom, which is really little more than common sense. Eventually he manages to sort out all their relationships with aplomb: Nada is reunited with her college sweetheart Omar (Ahmed Ezz), teaching assistant Ghada finally lets down her guard against the adolescent advances of Hazem (Ahmed Barrada), and Ruqaiya springs a surprise by flirting with movie star Karim (Khaled Abul-Naga) and then breaking things off when she realises he only wants a good time.
Khaled El-Hagar appears to have directed the actors with a light hand and their performances are refreshingly casual. Abdel-Baqi is the undoubted highlight of the film, with his wonderful comic timing and engagingly eccentric tics. Reminiscent of the wisecracking buddy who brings the lovers together in an earlier generation of Hollywood and Egyptian films, he nevertheless ends up finding love himself, too. Elwi combines motherly warmth with muted sex appeal in one uber-feminine package. The film veers towards the saccharine when her romance with the devoted Omar comes to a rose-sprinkled conclusion, but it is rescued from melodrama by its consistent airiness. Debutante Hana Shiha is creditably natural, if unexceptional, as a vivacious college student with few of the reservations that her Egyptian contemporaries tend to have about relationships.
The underdeveloped role of Ghada is less credible. Her distrust of men is conveyed by presenting her as a short-haired, scowling girl who denies her femininity with a uniform of baggy shirts and sweaters. She only sheds these when she is alone in her room, dreaming of her admirer and dancing in secret. Turk approaches the role a shade too tautly and aggressively, leaving little room for sympathy for a character who is the victim of her own defences. She is unlucky, moreover, to have been cast opposite Barrada, who has a lumbering screen presence. His expressionless stare and flat voice make it very hard to believe that this is the irresistible romantic who finally cures prickly Ghada of her belief that she hates men.
Ghada and Hazem, individually and as an awkward couple, constitute what is probably the weakest part of a film that otherwise does quite well in depicting believable characters. The film even sends up an overused stereotype of the romantic hero with Khaled Abul-Naga in a sly, understated satire of himself. As the self-absorbed actor Karim he memorably caricatures the mannered graciousness and flamboyant outfits of a star. The fact that it is young Ruqaiya, British-born to boot, who is perceptive enough to see through him, is a nice twist in an otherwise conventional plot.
One inevitably compares Hubb Al-Banat with the scriptwriter's last and more momentous effort, Sahar Al-Layali. Where that film unravelled the doubts and difficulties which bedevil marriages, the present film stops decisively at the point where our heroines are whisked off by handsome princes to live happily ever after. It is certainly a less adult film, both in its wide-eyed naiveté about love and its studied avoidance of sexuality. It is likely to be a hit with the teenage crowd, but is also enjoyable for older viewers who don't mind a dose of rosy romance to coincide with Valentine's day.
