As this seemingly rather washed out black and white film opens, Maha and Cherif are 30- something secular Eyptians enjoying a successful marriage and creative partnership as art directors in the country's large movie industry. Usually working for 'festival' films, they have agreed to take on a low budget B movie to widen their working opportunities. Their schedule is incredibly tight demanding the work of two weeks in two days. While Cherif can handle the pressure and appreciates learning how to do things 'another way', his wife Maha is a perfectionist and can't stand having to cut corners. She's particularly offended by the 'star' who insists that even though her character is a working class wife and mother, she's going to wear her own glitzy clothes and the full makeup her fans have come to expect.
The film that then goes to fracture all the conventions of film. As Maha becomes more and more obsessed with her artistic integrity, she finds herself walking out of her present reality and into the virtual reality of the set she has designed. She not only takes over the main role (with the 'right' clothes) but actually lives the B movie character's life—-an exhausted wife and mother with a loving but dull husband, an uninspiring job as an art teacher and a troubled relationship with her young daughter. Soon Maha becomes a truly divided self moving between the two worlds, in what is now a meta film about film itself and specifically a film referencing the classic woman's film. In both lives she is addicted to old Egyptian black and white classic melodramas of the 40's and 50's. From the rich velvety excerpts we see on the televisions in both 'sets', they are exactly the stuff of Joan and Bette and Barbara in Hollywood's female heyday. And they address the same issues that women, west and east, struggle with then and today today. Can we fulfill both mind and body ---brain and biology? Bluntly, do we choose the brilliant career with the handsome exciting husband who doesn't want children or all the compromises of motherhood with the dull but truly loving family man?
That is how the voice of reason, represented by the well intentioned male psychiatrist puts it. As her career self, Maha and her husband consult him on her troublesome 'imaginings' . Explaining her disassociated lives, he says that under stress we escape to a different reality. With a little probing, he then uncovers her conflicted feelings about motherhood. As a couple they have always agreed not to have children. "How can you bring a child into a world like this" the husband asks . Against the background of curfews and sirens that is the military dictatorship of Egypt today, it is hardly the liberal excuse it might be in the west. But when the psychiatrist asks Maha pointedly in which of her 'worlds' she is happiest, she has no clear answer. When she later collapses , she finds out she is four months pregnant. Her husband accuses Maha of misleading him and it is clear that her worlds have collided. Until now, as viewers we have assumed art director Maha is the real Maha but as 'the character' becomes more and more involved in her other life, the separation between the stories becomes more slippery. Instead of walking in and out of a set, the changes between one reality and another are now seamless until we are almost as de-centred as Maha herself, not knowing which story is 'true' .Finally we can only tell one Maha from another by whether she is wearing her lustrous black hair up or down. Maha herself is equally confused, but for her it is a question of which world she is living in, but which she wants to live in.
Once again- in sessions with each Maha and each husband- the psychiatrist concludes the obvious: we only have one life. "Can't you live it (whichever you choose) without it being perfect?" . Her reply: Do I have to choose? Isn't there a third way" ?.
Maha seems to find a third way by choosing not to choose; watching both husbands walk away, she closes the translucent curtain of her room in the psychiatric hospital she has committed herself to, and we assume some kind of integration and resolution .
But this end is only another beginning as Decor suddenly bursts into full colour and we are at the premier of a film about the film that we have just been watching which is of course another film about a film and on and on. All characters reappear in opening night full dress and rise to take a bow at what is clearly the premier of a big studio film with major stars. The only exception is the psychiatrist who we only glimpse as an ordinary audience member coming down the stairs, apart, like a one man Greek chorus perhaps.
But it's still not over . The camera moves away from all the characters we have been with for the last two hours and now -back to black and white -follows a young couple whom we have never seen before but who clearly are themselves embarking on a new relationship. As they leave the theatre, they turn in profile to look at each other. We know they are facing the same decisions as both couples in the films of the film, but then again in the last few seconds, black and white turns into a burst of colour as the camera sees the world outside the theatre doors. Life isn't an A or a B movie; it's the simple, complex reality we all face.
6 out of 8 found this helpful.
Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
