BEIRUT, Lebanon, April 15 (UPI) -- It's a warm summer day at a bus stop, a Canadian one. A lone, uncomfortable-looking woman in hijab is gazing with apparent envy as another (very much not in hijab) strides by, unfazed by the heat. At home, the first woman quickly peels off her sweaty headgear, breathing a sigh of relief.
Sweaty-summertime-hijab syndrome is a commonplace rarely addressed in films, particularly those set in the relatively frigid environs of Toronto. At its best, "Sabah," by Arab-Canadian writer-director Ruba Nadda, casts an informed eye upon the contradictions in a Muslim family living in a non-Muslim society. Jaundiced critics will be tempted to slate the 34-year-old director's depiction of the immigrant condition as saccharine and irredeemably cute. Anyone who's spent any time in Canada -- that large, sparsely populated, pathologically polite country -- will recognize in "Sabah" a vision that is true to the sensibilities of the host country.
The muhajjaba (veiled woman) we meet at the beginning of the film is the eponymous Sabah (Beirut-born Arsinee Khanjian, familiar to film buffs from her numerous roles in the work of auteur Atom Egoyan, himself credited as an executive producer of this film). The only unmarried daughter of a Syrian immigrant family, Sabah lives with her widowed mother. She's also turning 40 -- a perilous place, as rumor has it. Sabah's family evokes a number of emigrant Arab archetypes. There's Majid (Jeff Seymour), the stern, traditional brother who patrols the moral borders of the family. Their sister, Shaheera (Roula Said), is raising a rebellious twenty-something daughter, Souhaire (Fadia Nadda). When Sabah asks her how she manages to date boys, Souhaire smiles: "I lie."
On her birthday Sabah is inspired to start swimming at a public pool. Such an idea would cause a family stink, being veiled and all. So, like many women struggling to reconcile their needs to the social pressure to conform, she lies. Things go terribly wrong for the status quo when Stephen (Shawn Doyle) walks into the pool and -- before Sabah can flee -- uses her towel. In the subsequent flurry of apologies (both are Canadian, remember), pheromones are exchanged. Stephen asks her out. She shows up for the date in hijab.
Despite that, and the fact that Sabah insists on keeping him at arm's length from her family, a halting romance ensues. There are sub-plots. Sabah's only confidante is her niece Souhaire, who -- herself conspiring to evade an arranged marriage with another Arab Muslim -- counsels dishonesty and teaches her aunt the fine points of the belly dance. Khanjian's portrayal of Sabah, and of her burgeoning relationship with Stephen, are the strongest elements in the film. There's a gawky chemistry between her and Doyle -- she covers her hair, she explains, because "it's considered provocative. Not my hair. I mean hair generally".
There is something about "Sabah" that makes it quite unlike other movies of its ilk. Enough Arab-Muslim migrant films have been made now that it's as tempting to draw conclusions about the host countries as it is about the artists who make them. For reasons that no doubt preoccupy film students, movies about the migrant experience in francophone countries -- from Mathieu Kassovitz' "La Haine" ("Hate", 1995), about a trio of pals from the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis, to Ziad Doueri's "Lila dit ca" ("Lila Says", 2004), a coming-of-age film set in Marseille -- tend to be rather morose.
Rare exceptions -- Mahmoud Zemmouri's "100% Arabica" (1997), for instance, a rai comedy featuring Khaled and Cheb Mami -- prove the rule. Depictions of the South Asian experience in the United Kingdom aren't very flattering either. Take Kenny Glenaan's "Yasmin" (2004), which could be the evil twin of "Sabah", set in northern England. The Turkish experience of Germany seems to be more equivocal, at least based on the work of Fatih Akin. In the romantic-comic road movie "Im Juli" ("In July", 2000), a German travels to Turkey in search of his dream girl. "Gegen die Wand" ("Head On", 2004) follows a parallel plot vector to "Im Juli", albeit with two Turkish-German characters, but it's so violently hard-edged it makes "Yasmin" look like an after-school special.
As you go further north in continental Europe, you're more likely to find comedy. Albert Ter Heerdt's "Shouf Shouf Habibi!" (2004) features a cast of Moroccan-Dutch characters that have much in common with those of "Sabah" and are undergoing the same contradictory pulls of "assimilation" and "tradition". Shot before the Theo van Gogh murder, it is replete with jokes at the expense of Moroccan and Dutch manhood. The prototype of the light-hearted migrant story, though, comes from Scandinavia. Josef Fares's "Jalla! Jalla!" (2000) folds all the elements of conflicting assimilation and tradition -- Lebanese-Swedish boy with Swedish girlfriend must marry Lebanese-Swedish girl, as supervised by girl's domineering older brother -- into a working class romantic comedy, even fabricating a happy ending. It's not the most realistic treatment, but "Jalla! Jalla!" breathes a draught of fresh air over an otherwise stifling scenario.
Fares's new film, "Zozo" (which opens in Beirut tonight), follows a young migrant from civil war Lebanon to Sweden, and attempts to combine both sides of the migration equation with equal measures of pathos and humor. Many of the plot, character, and thematic elements of these films overlap with those of "Sabah," but the tone and character of Nadda's film are quite distinct. It lacks the slapstick elements of the comedies while shying away from the irreconcilable differences probed by Kassovitz and Akin.
The defining difference, perhaps, is that "Sabah" is a North American film. For this reason, it more closely echoes that genre of romantic comedy exemplified by Joel Zwick's "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" (2002) and, rather more closely, "Moonstruck" (1987), an Italian-American "oddball romance" by Norman Jewison (another Canadian). As in Jewison's movie, Nadda's plot takes Sabah's family about as close to fracturing as can be imagined.
Then there's a happy resolution. It turns out that Sabah's mother is entirely willing to consider Stephen as a son-in-law. The boyfriend Majid has found for Souhaire is actually a cool guy. Majid, it seems, is an idiot because he's been bearing such a heavy burden that he's been unable to share. Nadda herself has said that she worked to make Majid's position explicable because she wanted to avoid an over-simplified version of the immigrant story. She dislikes efforts to pigeonhole "Sabah" into comparisons with other films of its type. Highlighting its "Arab migrant archetypes", she says, forces "Sabah" into a role it was never meant to fill.
This film, she says, is about a woman realizing that she can make choices. Is the result saccharine and irredeemably cute? By most measures, yes. The filmmaking isn't necessarily as good as the story is true. But "Sabah" faithfully replicates the pathological niceness of Canada as surely as Akin's work reflects the ambivalence of the German condition. If you want to see Khanjian in a film that gouges through the attenuated civility of the Canadian condition, pick up some Atom Egoyan.
Ruba Nadda's "Sabah" is now screening in movie theatres throughout greater Beirut.
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(Jim Quilty is a Canadian staff writer for the Daily Star, based in Beirut.)
Provided by Search for Common Ground News Service
