Despite reservations, Mohamed El-Assyouti gets a good laugh out of Zaza The release of comedian Hani Ramzi's political satire Zaza comes as a welcome surprise from a censorship even more sensitive towards political criticism than taboos relating to sex and religion. Zaza opens with a statement declaring that the events of this film take place in a fictional Third World country and bear no connection to any specific time or place "at all, at all, at all". When an autocratic Third World regime, subjected to a lot of pressure from a superpower, announces its first "democratic" presidential elections, the two candidates who run in the elections opposite the octogenarian president are accidentally killed. The prime minister and the interior minister conspire against the citizen Zaza, and blackmail him to run for president to preserve the illusion that the elections are "really democratic". However, the spontaneity and simplicity of Zaza impress the politically-frustrated masses, who, despite his imprisonment, vote for him. When he wins, Zaza resolves to stand up to internal corruption and the pressures of the foreign powers. He decides to fire all the ministers, obtain nuclear weapons and revise all international treaties signed by the former regime. Such is the fantastical plot of the film written by Tareq Abdel-Gelil, directed by Ali Abdel-Khaleq, produced by Hani Girguiss Fawzi and starring veteran Kamal El-Shennawi and comedian Hani Ramzi. Zaza focusses on two themes. The first is internal corruption that isolates the ruling elite from the ruled masses, the former thus ignoring of the latter's everyday sufferings, poverty, ignorance, unemployment, sexual frustration and even the inability to dream and use their imagination. The second is the regime's interest in its own self-perpetuation and grip on power to the exclusion of any interest in protecting the rights of citizens; consequently it turns into a client of the superpowers, helping them achieve their own ends at the expense of the nation's sovereignty, needs and demands. More of a caricature than a poignant dramatic treatment, Abdel-Gelil's screenplay, which was passed by the censors after several months of delay, hits many a nail on the head. As a satire, Zaza is a taboo-breaker, and therein lies its timely value. As a film, however, it is unlikely to pass the test of time. Director Ali Abdel-Khaleq, whose name is associated with a few of the major 1970s and 1980s films -- including Al-Hubb Wahduh La Yakfi (Love Alone is not Enough, 1981), Al-'Ar (The Shame, 1982) and Al-Sada Al-Murtashoun (The Corrupt Gentlemen, 1983) -- has not made a single noteworthy film in over two decades. Besides Mohamed El-Naggar, who made several of the new wave comedies, he is the only director of his generation to ever direct one of the new comedians' vehicles. In terms of style, his technique has changed: more close-ups and faster rhythm, both to emphasise Hani Ramzi's brand of humour. Another veteran working in Zaza is cinematographer Mohsin Ahmed. With additional camera work by Kamal Abdel-Aziz, Ahmed's visual style was eminently faulty, with many shots out of focus and others with poor lighting design. This, in addition to the general technical negligence of detail and hodge-podge style, put the film way behind its comedy contemporaries. Though Zaza is perhaps not as brainless as most of the other comedies, the audience keen on spending time with technically- polished screen stuff may simply shrug it off as not worth their while. Nonetheless, Abdel-Gelil -- winner of a state award this year for his previous Ramzi vehicle, Ayez Haqqi (I Want My Rights), which also had been mainly political satire -- has an approach to political comedy unlike anything that has been tried over the past 25 years. On the other hand, the casting of El-Shennawi -- a veteran actor who first appeared as a romantic star in 1950s films -- as the president Metwalli El-Hennawi is perhaps the most effective choice the filmmakers made. El-Shennawi's screen persona includes playing Khaled Safwan, the high official who supervises the torture and rape of political prisoners in Ali Badrakhan's classic Al-Karnak (1975), based on Naguib Mahfouz's novel by the same title. Also, in the popular Al-Irhab Wal-Kabab (Terrorism and Kebab, 1992), by Sherif Arafa, El-Shennawi plays the Ministry of Interior's high official who negotiates with the citizens holding civil employees hostage inside the Mugamaa -- Tahrir Square's largest building containing many public service bureaus and symbolising the government. El-Shennawi has also played the head of a Mafia-like family in a recent Ramadan soap opera directed by Mohamed Fadel, titled Li Dawa'i Amniya (For Security Measures) and bearing clear political connotations. In a sense, El-Shennawi has held the special status of being identified as the adversary in films revolving around a political conflict. Now advanced in age, El-Shennawi does not give the same impression of tyranny as he used to in the past, but a residue of a Lear-like pathos is registered by viewers familiar with his roles in the aforementioned popular works. Therefore, Zaza 's El-Hennawi is a president with few traces of past tyranny. El-Shennawi's role ends with the first half of the film, the one that deals with the autocratic regime. In the second half, Zaza wins, and so the hypothetical emerging democracy has no place for El-Shennawi's character. The film has no answer for the question: "Where does he go?" Other casting pluses include Youssef Fawzi as the interior minister, El-Sayed Radi as the prime minister, and Ahmed Maher -- who played a similar role in Mohamed Fadel's Nasser '56 -- as the defence minister. But the most remarkable choice is Khayria Ahmed, as Zaza's paralysed mother, who is exploitative and selfish -- a tradition that had been established since the success of Al-Limbi (2002), one of whose main storylines was the tit-for-tat mother-son relationship. Also, Amira Fathi aptly plays the famous diva-like TV presenter who is complicit with both the old and the new regimes in another role alluding to a real-life character. Zaza mixes serious political criticism with verbal gags, often playing with sexual connotations to target an audience out for escapist comedy. The censors reportedly excised two scenes, one showing the president obtaining sexual favours from a prostitute and the other having all the ministers of the cabinet admitting having been caught on camera in compromising adulterous sexual situations. Despite its many shortcomings, Zaza is a good way to spend two hours watching Egyptian cinema's mother of all taboos become the subject of audience laughter.
