An ageing Egyptian movie star is bullied into leading a sinister, government-sponsored biopic of the president, with current presidential news footage cheekily inserted. The star, comfortable with cheesy crowd-pleasing potboilers, is pressured by a cabal of generals who exploit his vanity and vulnerability. He is treated with suspicion because he is notionally a Coptic Christian, despite lacking piety. His personal life is strained, with separation from his wife and grownup son, while he becomes entangled with a young, untalented wannabe actress. The film portrays glamorous movie culture as easily repurposed for political propaganda, blending satire, despair, and humor.
"This new film is a seductive black-comic political thriller set in Egypt of the present day, showing us that everyone in the glamorous world of the movies, infatuated as they are with made-up stories acted out by narcissists believing in their own publicity, can so easily be pressed into the service of political propaganda. The result is a rackety, despairing, funny film with something of Billy Wilder, or Istvan Szabo's Mephisto, or Bertolucci's fascism parable The Conformist."
"Saleh's lead is his longtime leading man Fares Fares, playing an ageing Egyptian movie star; this is pampered matinee idol George Fahmy, a man comfortable doing cheesy crowd-pleasing potboilers, now bullied into playing the lead in a sinister government-sponsored biopic of the president (with news footage of the current president, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, cheekily cut in)."
"Fares's gaunt, handsome face so eloquently conveys vanity, but also a poignant emotional woundedness, anxiety and self-pity. And his aquiline nose makes him resemble, perhaps, a cartoon eagle, an echo of the creepy cabal of generals who have inveigled poor George into selling out the pitiful remnants of his integrity, calling themselves the eagles of the republic."
"George is notionally a Coptic Christian, which has made him an object of suspicion for the government, though he is hardly pious, and is separated from his wife (Donia Massoud) and grownup son Ramy (Suhaib Nashwan). Absurdly, he is with the young and poutingly untalented wannabe movie star Donya (Lyna Khoudri), whom he cannot sat"
Read at www.theguardian.com
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