Using the Arabian Nights metaphor of a beautiful woman narrating stories, this Egyptian film is built around a provocative Cairo chat-show host who interviews three women with different tales of abusive relationships. She reacts with outrage to each, as a liberated modern woman.

But by the end, the narrator herself becomes the story, in a shocking climax. She did the interviews with women to avoid politics, so helping out her husband, an upwardly-mobile journalist in the state-owned press. But time and time again her interviewees bring her back to political questions which are uncomfortable for those her husband wants to please.

The three women's stories all hold attention. The most powerful is the middle story, about the three sisters who own a shop staffed by their late father's young apprentice. It has strong overtones of magic realism – even in its tragic ending.

Perhaps it is no accident that this is the only story set in the poorer milieu in which most Egyptians live. The first and last stories have their own power, but are set among the wealthier classes, who live a lifestyle which would be envied by many in the West, not to mind Egypt. The chat show host's material life is similarly idyllic – but in her case, it makes her eventual fate all the more shocking.

Cast Credits: (alpha order): Mahmoud Hemida - Adham. Hassan El Raddad - Karim. Nahed El Sebaï - Hanaa. Mona Zaki - Hebba. (Source www.imdb.com at 3 March 2010. Full credits at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1473149/)

Company Credits: Writer - Wahid Hamid. Director - Yousry Nasrallah. Producer - Kamel Abo-Ali. Company - Misr Cinema Company. (Source www.imdb.com at 3 March 2010. Full credits at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1473149/)

END

(c) Colman Higgins 2010

reviewed Sunday 21 February 2010 / Screen Cinema 1, Dublin, Ireland

Fringe Report (c) Fringe Report 2002-2012

www.fringereport.com