Review Scheherazade Tell Me a Story (aka Women of Cairo) [2009] | poetslandscape

MPAA (no longer rated) Fr. Dennis (3 half of of stars)

IMDb Listing - http://www.Imdb.Com/pick out/tt1473149/

I had actually planned to see another movie this evening but the time had not worked out. And while scanning through the movie listings, I came across the 2009 Egyptian movie Scheherazade Tell Me a Story (aka Women of Cairo), written by Wahid Hamid and directed by Yousry Nasrallah, playing at a more convenient time at Facet’s Multimedia on Fullerton St here in Chicago.

This January-February, Egypt captured the imagination of the arena with its bringing down of the lots despised regime of Hosni Mubarak. Further, the reference to Scheherazade inside the film?S pick out (Scheherazade modified into the girl individual spherical whose storytelling abilties The 1001 Arabian Nights have been built) while the movie precis promised a cutting-edge reworking of the tale straight away stuck my interest. Finally, for the duration of this winter?S Egyptian Revolution each the location of women in Egypt's revolution further to their precise war toward endemic sexual harrassment was included with the useful resource of the press. As such, I got here to Facet?S Multimedia thinking what I may want to see. And the film did now not disappoint. I observed it to be a compelling and frequently unexpected movie.

Indeed, Scheherazade Tell me a Story proper away jogged my memory of the Czech movies (esp. Loves of Blonde and Fireman?S Ball) of the mid-1960s made inside the duration proper now preceeding the Prague Spring in a political weather now not altogether unique from that of the last years of Egypt Mubarak regime. A corrupt and widely discredited regime become collapsing and those, especially artists, had been dreaming.

Scheherazade Tell Me a Story additionally reminded me of the 2001 Indian movie Monsoon Wedding which supplied India to the arena as a vibrant cutting-edge-day society, able to not excellent addressing but contributing to the dialogue of the crucial social troubles going through the sector of our time. Scheherazade Tell Me a Story moreover affords a very well modern face of Egypt (without denying the alternative elements of Egypt as well) that _honestly amazed me_ and possibly would surprise most Americans.

The conflict among modernity and traditionalism in addition to the sclerosis of a regime that had outlived any usefulness shaped the backdrop to the story.

The film?S primary characters, Hemma and Karim, performed thru Egyptian actors Mona Zaki and Hassan El Raddad respectively, are young successful Egyptian yuppie newshounds dwelling in a swanky rental in Cairo. Karim reveals out early within the movie that he could be made editor in chief of one in every of Cairo?S (government run) newspapers if simplest he have to inspire his spouse, Hemma, to persuade her television communicate display far from

The movie proceeds with three Egyptian women from widely varied sections of Egyptian society (veiled and unveiled, from among the rich, poor and middle class) telling their stories on Hemma’s television program, each story becoming more compelling and more dangerous than the previous. The stories are not pleasant, and burrow into male-female relational issues that make the incompetence and corruption of Mubarak’s regime beside the point. (Perhaps this is why the movie was even allowed to be made, because it appears to have been filmed in Egypt).

It is here that director Nasrallah’s invocation of Scheherazade becomes truly fascinating and pointed. In the 1001 Arabian Nights, Scheherazade was a woman who was able to survive solely by her wits through her ability to tell stories to her husband/king that would entertain and distract him enough to want to keep her alive. On one level, all the journalists in the film were similarly dancing and spinning tales that kept them both honest with themselves and out of trouble with the authorities. But in particular, it was the women who lived in situations where the society’s rules were just horribly stacked against them.

One hopes that with the fall of the Mubarak regime and brave film-making/story-telling such as this, today’s Sheherazades will not merely spin tales to stay alive but be able to continue to now tell things as they are so that the conditions of women in the Middle East will improve.

A final note, while Scheherazade Tell Us a Story presents difficult/painful themes and in a few instances the movie shows more blood than an American would be comfortable with, one of the remarkable features of this movie is actually _how gently funny_ it often is.  It touches some very big problems, but does so in a surprisingly light/gentle if still pointed way.

So while the movie does focus on the difficulties of women in Egypt's society, I would recommend this movie to anyone (especially a younger college aged/young adult audience) who'd be interested about learning more about Egypt today and its recent history/problems.

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