TV Note: "Scheherezade, Tell Me a Story" (5/22 and 5/24)

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David Shasha

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May 20, 2013, 10:35:02 AM5/20/13

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"Scheherezade, Tell Me a Story" will be screened on Link TV, Wednesday, May 22nd at 10:30 PM and Late Thursday/Early Friday, May 24th at 1:30 AM

http://www.linktv.org/programs/scheherazade-tell-me-a-story

Movie Review: “Scheherazade, Tell Me a Story” (Yousry Nasrallah, 2009)

By: Joyce Zonana

In the ancient frame tale of the Arabian Nights, two Persian kings, the brothers Shahzaman and Shahryar, are horrified to learn that their wives have active, independent sex lives. Shahzaman is deeply depressed by his discovery; Shahryar is enraged, promptly killing his wife and her lover, and resolving to marry, and then murder, a different woman every night. Scheherazade, the brilliant daughter of his hangman, offers to wed the king, fully aware of his homicidal intentions, but determined to stop his madness and save the women of the kingdom. She will seduce him, not with her body but her mind. She will tell him stories. And so she does, captivating the king for what is said to be 1001 nights, bearing him three children and teaching him to love.

In the contemporary vision of Egyptian writer Wahid Hamid, a modern Scheharazade is not so lucky. Stunningly directed by Yousry Nasrallah, Scheherazade, Tell Me a Story depicts women of all social classes and education trapped in a society that continues to fear and repress autonomous female desire—whether it be for sex, love, career, or, most importantly, truth. The modern female storyteller, in Hamid and Nasrallah’s chilling tale, is punished as much for her mind as for her sexuality.

Hebba (Mona Zaki) is a popular TV talk show host; her husband Karim (Hassan El Raddad) is about to be appointed editor-in-chief of the national newspaper. There’s one catch: his wife must stop her probing exposes of governmental corruption and repression. Karim persuades a reluctant Hebba to shift her focus: she will look at women’s lives, telling tales of ordinary women in ordinary circumstances. She will forego politics, at least until Karim gets his coveted post. This Scheherazade, in a modern marriage of apparent equals, agrees to tell women’s stories to save, not her own, but her husband’s (professional) life—and, of course, her marriage.

Hebba and Karim live in a magnificently decorated, enormous, modern apartment. They dress in fashionable, sexy Western clothes; Hebba exercises to keep her figure; she has even, it is rumored, had plastic surgery to enhance her beautiful face. The film, shot in gorgeous color, focuses on these glittering surfaces, the better to expose the dark depths barely concealed beneath. Hebba and Karim, for all their contemporary flair, are enacting a very ancient tale.

For, as Hebba quickly discovers, no experience is without its political dimension. The woman branded insane for her refusal to marry a wealthy man, the woman who kills a lover who has played her (and her sisters) for a fool, the woman who is seduced and then betrayed by a cynical opportunist – each one tells a tale that implicates a whole society, revealing the links between political, economic, religious, and sexual repression. Facing the camera, each woman breaks out of the careful script Hebba has prepared, directly addressing her audience and naming the sources of the violence she has suffered. And, as Hebba discovers, she too is caught in this web of violence that functions to contain not only women but all independent desire.

For, while the focus of the film is on women, one cannot help but see the repression of women as representative of the repression of all unruly elements within a rigidly hierarchical, corrupt society. This is Egypt before the Arab Spring, before the abdication of Mubarak, an Egypt in which the government works to control the media and to keep wealth in the hands of a select few. Truth-telling—by anyone—is a seditious, revolutionary act, and yet we see a handful of women taking that extraordinary step. In Nasrallah and Hamid’s rendition of contemporary Egypt, the revolution begins with women. Each of these women has nothing left to lose; what the film suggests is that only when one is entirely outside the system is one free to speak truthfully. Sex, love, money, power: all blind and seduce; the truest storytelling emerges only in the shadow of the noose. And yet that storytelling has the potential to transform a world. For men as well as for women, this is the sobering lesson of Scheherazade, Tell Me a Story.