Egyptian film-maker Omar El Zohairy is a brilliant emerging talent with an impressive professional pedigree; he is a former assistant to Yousry Nasrallah (who himself started out as assistant to the celebrated Youssef Chahine) and has won festival prizes with this, his debut feature. It’s a comedy with a little of Woody Allen or Franz Kafka – though with not much of the famous Emily Dickinson quote about what hope is. It is also a social-surrealist parable about a woman’s place in a man’s world. Higher than the animals? Lower than the animals? El Zohairy conjures something elegant and mysterious with a deadpan wit, which coolly encases its compassion. He frames his shots with superb compositional flair – this film actually reminded me of another Egyptian film, Ibrahim El-Batout’s Winter of Discontent. And there’s some excellent child acting and baby acting.
The scene is a cramped, squalid flat inhabited by a boorish factory worker (Samy Bassiouny), always grandly announcing the things he’ll buy for the family someday. His unsmiling put-upon wife is played by Demyana Nassar, who shows that her character is almost catatonic with the tensions caused by making do for their three kids on the housekeeping money he gives her. And in this film the simple activity of counting out cash is vitally important, a recurring image connected with power. People are always giving money, taking money, or making deals in an atmosphere of shabby secrecy and shame. One day, the father invites all his mates as well as a high-up figure he oleaginously calls “Boss” to the flat for his son’s birthday party. (It appears that his workplace loans cash for this sort of thing.)
