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Bold, colourful and provocative, The Yacoubian Building is, above all, supremely entertaining. With its rich social detail and affectionate characterisations it recalls the scope of Reitz’s Heimat, whilst Cairo’s heady, cigar-clouded decadence evokes the mystery and romance of a latter-day Casablanca. Egypt’s official entry for the Foreign Language category in the 79th Academy Awards, it frankly tackles themes of adultery, prostitution, religion, corruption – even homosexuality.

‘Who doesn’t have a bad reputation in Egypt?’ asks a character. Well, according to this colourful, decadent drama, based on Alaa Al Aswany’s best-selling nove, the answer is nobody.

Set in Cairo, 1990, it shows a country poised between slow decay and simmering extremism, but the tale is told through melodrama rather than polemic. Modern Egypt is depicted through the prism of a grand apartment building in which every strata of Egyptian society have made their home, from the pieds-à-terre of the corrupt elite to the roofhut slums inhabited by the poor.

 

Milo Wakelin on 8th May 2008
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