Costas-2

Romantica (1996)

A powerful debut

This is a very powerful first-film of an actor (Zaki Fateen Abdel Wahab appeared in Youssef Chahine and other directors' films) who happens to be the son of the famous director of the old Egyptian cinema Fateen Abdel Wahab, and the legendary singer and actress Layla Mourad. The subject is identified with the director's situation, as the film pictures the impossible fight of a young director, being the son of a famous cinema-couple, trying to make an unconventional for the Egyptian market film. The modern common life of young people, trying to survive through small con-affairs with tourists and foreign diplomats, aspiring for a better life, possibly a success in cinema acting or even escaping to the land of the American dream, is described with restrained sympathy, identifying the protagonist with the real director's feelings. Despair alternates with comic situations, as the director's trials to finance the film move from one misunderstanding to another. The film climaxes with an extravagant "terrorist" act, for the sake... of the film production, and reveals the fight of the "old" against the evolution to a free thinking future. After the internationally famous Egyptian directors, the neo-realist Salah Abou Seif and the "Europeanist" romantic director Youssef Chahine, the Egyptian Cinema can count on an emerging power, the Post-Modern Arabesque director Zaki Fateen Abdel Wahab.

Costas Ferris