The Yacoubian Building may expose corruption at the top, include poor shop assistants being sexually harassed by their employer, show the rottenness of parliament and the police force, but it is the inclusion of a homosexual character that has provoked the most criticism, reports Gihan Shahine Newspapers have had a field day attacking the star studded screen adaptation of Alaa Al-Aswani bestselling novel The Yacoubian Building, probably the most expensive film in Egyptian cinema history, costing a purported LE30 million to make. Almost inevitably, given that the film, like the novel, exposes corruption at all levels of society, from the highest echelons of government to the small time shop owner who demands sexual favours from the assistants he employs in return for their jobs, it has attracted the usual chorus of condemnation for defaming the image of Egypt. And then, to top it all, it includes an openly gay character, engaged in a relationship with a much younger security policeman. "This film is spreading obscenity and debauchery, which is totally against Egyptian moral values," said independent MP Mustafa Bakri, who has spearheaded the campaign against the film in the People's Assembly, where 112 MPs have demanded that several scenes be cut. "As a citizen," said Bakri, "I felt hurt when I watched it." Culture Minister Farouk Hosni told parliament that any resort to censorship could only be justified in exceptional cases, and the film was not one of them. While private media and cinema may focus on negative aspects of society, they are perfectly within their rights to do so, he argued, pointing out that other documentaries present Egypt in a positive light. He accused the film's parliamentary critics of blowing things out of proportion. Among the film's characters, played by such luminaries as Adel Imam and Nour El-Sherif, is a 65-year-old drunken playboy with aristocratic origins, a nouveau-rich drug-dealer, Haj Azzam, who constantly spouts religious pieties while paying government minister Kamal El-Fouli LE1 million in order to secure a seat in parliament and the car dealership for a lucrative Japanese brand, and who then has to pay LE100 million in bribes annually to ensure that he is allowed to continue in his illicit trade. Then there is the son of a doorman who turns to fundamentalism when refused entry to the police academy on account of his social background, and a poor young woman sexually harassed by her boss. But it is the character of Hatem Rasheed who appears to have excited the bulk of the criticism -- after all, he is a self-appointed scourge of political corruption. The editor of a French language newspaper, Rasheed is eventually murdered by a one-night stand. Mona, a 30-year-old who the saw the film, saw many people leaving the cinema during scenes involving Rasheed and his lover and regrets that she did not do the same: "I was soaking in sweat as I watched the obscene shots and listened to the dialogue comments in the film." The Yacoubian Building 's director, Marwan Hamed, said the film had consciously trodden "a thin line between trying to be daring and pushing away the audience". "We need to address taboos, we need to cancel the word taboo from our lives. To progress we must talk about everything. If we don't, if we remain constantly in denial, how will things improve?" Hamed told the BBC. Bakri counters that while he would encourage all forms of creativity and would oppose any attempt to ban the film outright, "unneeded embarrassing details and obscene shots that would sympathise with those harbouring homosexual inclinations" must be discouraged. Hamed finds it "unfortunate" that some people are attempting to "inflate" the homosexuality in the film in order to divert public attention from the other forms of corruption the film presents and opens up for discussion. "There are many films that are far more obscene. At least this film is honest enough to show corruption within government, in parliament and the police force," one audience member told Al-Ahram Weekly. Cairo University Political Science Professor Mustafa Kamel El-Sayed sees the heated criticisms which have greeted the film as symptomatic of the "conservative religious mood prevailing in society". While the public seems inured to corruption among senior officials it can be mobilised to object to any work of art that appears to transgress in terms of sexual behaviour, said El-Sayed, citing a recent case in which a book by Moroccan novelist Mahmoud Shukri was dropped from the AUC curricula following complaints. Leading Al-Ahram columnist Salama Ahmed Salama would "rather encourage people to focus on the aspects of corruption, in parliament and government, presented in the movie and which are more hazardous and damaging to society than homosexuality, which harms only those who practise it." And in the end, argues Salama, it is up to the individual to decide what he or she will watch. "Parliament, or any religious authority, should refrain from exercising any kind of guardianship over Egyptian viewers, who are sufficiently mature to make up their own minds."
