As for the film’s homosexuality, a handsome police cadet’s seduction by an ageing gentleman is so caricatured, that the crowd roared with derisive - not nervous -laughter. The audience tensed at the sight of his battered, blindfolded face and remained so well into the next scene. The son of the building boab (an earnest youth refused admission to the police academy because of the accident of his birth) is disillusioned, recruited by fundamentalists and arrested by the police. This continued unabated until the torture scene. The crowd at the Odeon was typical: mostly boys, a few with dates, several families with infants whose cries were lost in the din of conversation, critique, praise, and impromptu jokes.
Adel Imam - Egyptian comedy’s former tutelary deity, now a maudlin, pot-bellied grandpa - manages to grope and bestow his froggy kisses on yet another beautiful, ambitious bint. Whether this delicacy is real or feigned, it’s as melodramatic as the movie, whose only truly obscene moment is one we’ve seen before. When questioned as to who left and why, the ushers at the Odeon said it was mostly girls who found the R-rated film obscene. Following the early showings, word was out: The Yacoubian Building has gone too far! People left before intermission, an unheard-of event since Egyptians will sit through unimaginable tripe, if only to enjoy the A/C. What is interesting is the response to the film, or more precisely, to the narrative content that survived the scriptwriter’s hackneyed treatment. The film itself is unsubtle, overlong and visually flat, with all the artistic merit of a wad of chewing gum stuck to the sole of a shoe. Presented at several foreign film festivals, The Yacoubian Building is causing a stir for its so-called frank portrayal of corruption, torture, classism and several types of exploitative sex. These days, it’s showing the screen adaptation of The Yacoubian Building, based on the eponymous novel by Alaa al-Aswany. Downtown Cairo’s Odeon Theater charges half the price of other first-run film venues and is consequently always packed. I haven't seen it yet and heard very conflicting opinions about it, and Maria's review puts it in the proper socio-political context.
My friend Maria Golia, writer, columnist and author of Cairo: City of Sand (What? You haven't read it yet? Do you like staying ignorant about contemporary Egypt and Umm ad-Dounia? What are you waiting for ?) has sent me this review of Egypt's star-packed, hit movie of the summer, The Yacoubian Building, based on the Alaa Al Aswany novel of the same name.
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