Mabrouk Ramadan Abu El Alamien Hamouda, director Wael Ehsan's latest film, is a cocktail of ingredients that do not mix, writes Hani Mustafa Scriptwriters of Egyptian comedies often employ social criticism in their films, aligning themselves at least in this regard with the criticisms of society made by those favouring religious trends of thought. Among the many examples of such films are those that criticise the behaviour of young people, viewing them as "westernized" and alienated from the traditions of Egyptian society. Scriptwriter Youssef Ma'ti and director Wael Ehsan, for example, are not far from this logic in their latest film Mabrouk Ramadan Abu El Alamien Hamouda, starring Mohamed Henaidi. At the beginning of the film, it seems that audiences will be presented with another version of the story dealt with in the US film To Sir with Love, which, based on a novel by E.R. Braithwaite, was made into a 1967 film starring Sidney Poitier and directed by James Clavell. In this film, an idealistic young teacher is confronted with a rebellious group of high-school pupils in London's tough East End. Mabrouk Ramadan Abu El Alamien Hamouda picks up on this idea by presenting the experiences of Mabrouk, a frustrated teacher of Arabic in an Egyptian secondary school. Clavell's film presents no moral judgments and instead depends on a strong script, which, though it criticises the delinquent behaviour of the pupils at the school, never loses sight of the sense of humour for which the film is famous. To Sir with Love has been rehashed several times for the Egyptian cinema and theatre, most notably in the phenomenally successful play Madraset El Moshaghebin by Ali Salem. The script of Mabrouk Ramadan Abu El Alamien Hamouda depends, like the earlier US film and unlike the Egyptian play, on the teacher as the main character. Ehsan concentrates on close-up shots of the teacher's hands as he grips his bicycle, and these, together with other shots that do not show his face, render him at first unknown to the audience. They also give a powerful sense of the teacher's character and his control over his classes. The first part of the film gives the details of Mabrouk's life, showing his readiness to inflict corporal punishment on the pupils when they make mistakes. He appears to be furious when he corrects their exercise books, and, coming across a particularly serious mistake, he even goes to the pupil's house to scold him in front of his family. In one scene in the film, the pupil's mother is presented as just having died, but Mabrouk goes to scold him anyway, even while he is receiving condolences. This extensive use of corporal punishment is not presented as problematic. On the contrary, the writer presents it as a means for teachers to earn respect, and similarly conservative moral judgments are made throughout the film. The script also takes the audience to another Cairo school, this time a school for the elite and one that is very different from Mabrouk's school. However, this school too is shown as chaotic, though the chaos is of a different sort. Car and motorcycle races take place in front of the school buildings, and the teaching is devoid of rigour or content. Overall, Mabrouk Ramadan Abu El Alamien Hamouda does not hide its prejudices against what might be called "modern education." It ridicules the existence of swimming pools in the elite school, for example, and the very idea of swimming as a school subject. Predictable comparisons are made between the two schools, the "traditional" and the "modern", and it is obvious that Mabrouk, as a teacher from a traditional school, will be set up as some kind of moral touchstone when he is introduced to the different way of doing things at the modern school. When the minister of education, played by Ezzat Abu Ouf, decides to punish his son by sending him to the traditional school where he himself was educated a confrontation between traditional and modern ideas about education begins. In fact, it might be argued that this is where the film as a whole should have begun, the rest of the material making up a kind of lengthy introduction. Mabrouk starts to work in the elite school, giving the director the chance to draw on elements from To Sir with Love by showing his relationships with the elite pupils. These include the sons of ministers and members of parliament. When Mabrouk goes to the house of a student to scold him as he had done at his former, more traditional school, the security men stationed outside the house themselves attack the teacher. The film's script makes much of the contrast between the teacher, with his conservative ideas, and the pupils, whose ideas might be described as more "modern," and it is suggested that one of the reasons for the pupils' poor behaviour is their fascination with a Lebanese singer called Naglaa (played by Serene Abdel-Nour). However, even though Naglaa is presented as an example of moral decadence, rather implausibly a relationship between her and Mabrouk begins when the later goes to her house in search of his delinquent pupils. Needless to say, this subplot makes no sense, and the longeurs of the scenes in which the relationship is explored do not help viewers to accept it. From this point on, the film becomes less like To Sir with Love and more like Billy Wilder's 1963 comedy Irma la Douce. The script moves away from the school and concentrates on the relationship between Mabrouk and Naglaa instead. Mabrouk forbids Naglaa's singing and then proceeds to work night and day to provide for her and to support their marriage. The film becomes more and more melodramatic as Mabrouk begins to abandon his previous principles, giving increasing numbers of private classes to supplement his income. He starts to accompany Naglaa to the nightclub in which she works, and things reach a particular low, when, in what is presumably a tribute to Egyptian black-and-white films, his mother sees him collecting tips thrown at his wife as she sings. The film ends abruptly. After divorcing Naglaa, Mabrouk is seen in a mosque telling a friend what has happened. His friend advises him to return to his home and to ask for his mother's forgiveness. When he reaches his mother's house in his family village, Mabrouk finds that Naglaa is already there. Wearing village clothes, she protests her willingness to give up her former life and to live in the village. A group of Mabrouk's former pupils urge him to believe her. Mabrouk Ramadan Abu El Alamien Hamouda contains some fine comic acting by Henaidi. However, Henaidi's performance apart, the film contains little that will detain audiences. Consisting of a sort of cocktail of past US comedies, the film is not worthy of a major actor who has been absent from our screens for too long.
