GENENET AL ASMAK
AQUARIUM, THE
There is an aquarium in The Aquarium - the one in Cairo's landmark grotto gardens. Youssef, an anesthesiologist, circles the gardens endlessly, but he has never gone inside. As he explains to Laila, careerist host of a late night radio call-in show, it seems to him the kind of place you enter knowing you will never leave. This motion - around, but never into - accurately describes Youssef and Laila's identically arm's length approaches to their lives and to their city. Government corruption and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism are given the same sidelong glance as the characters' more intimate troubles: Laila's inability to buck her class-conscious mother or let herself fall in love and Youssef's fraught relationship with his father, who is dying slowly and painfully. A poetic and multilayered film, in which only in the final frames does reveal a political intent: The Aquarium closes on a claustrophobic shot of protesters, the camera poised, for once, in the middle of the action. (Peter Scarlet)
- Hend Sabry - Laila
- Amr Waked - Youssef
- Gamil Ratib - Youssefs Vater
- Bassem Samra - Zakki
- Ahmed El Fichawy - Amr
- Dorra Zarouk - Marwa
- Yousry Nasrallah
- Nasser Abdel-Rahmane
- Samir
- Ibrahim El Dessouky
- Christophe Vingtrinier
- Mona Rabi
- Tamer Karawan
- Adel El Maghraby
- Nahed Nasrallah
A.R.T. Film 28 St. Mohyee El-Din Abu El-Ezz Elmohandiseen, Giza, Ägypten T 2 33383338 sales2@art.com.eg
