Yasser Shafiey’s Complaint No. 713317 uses a broken fridge as the unlikely catalyst for drama, comedy, and absurdity. Starring veteran actors Sharihan and Mahmoud Heimedia, Shafiey’s debut feature competes in the Horizons of Arab Cinema in its world premiere in Cairo, offering a needed splash in the comedy scene of Egyptian cinema.
Shafiey brings back absurdity at the expense of absolute realism, and builds a world where material tension is tested. Complaint No. 713317 takes pleasure in filming the ordinary, silent frustrations of life with plenty of twists. In his previous short works The Dream of a Scene, Intense Practice to Improve Performance and The Man Who Swallowed the Radio, absurdity is there to address realism. In his first feature, he brings back the comedy schools of veteran Egyptian filmmakers like Rafaat Al-Meehy.
Magdy and Sama, married for thirty-seven years, live in a modest Maadi apartment whose walls, furniture, and aging appliances silently testify to a life of repetition and emptiness. All hell breaks loose when Magdy tries to defrost the old fridge with a hammer and knife. What seemed like a routine domestic malfunction turns into a mirror reflecting the cracks in a long marriage.
Magdy has been retired from his job at the Ministry of Agriculture for years, and lives on a small pension. Meanwhile Sama is soon to retire also from her government job and will receive a nice sum as an end-of-service bonus, a fact that disrupts Magdy’s idea of gender roles. Sharihan and Heimedia are brilliant in acting out these characters. Sama is caring and warm, cleans the house and cooks oversalted soup, while Magdy moves with pride, never admits any mistake, lies to hide his errors, and never allows her to spend any of her money.
When the old fridge goes belly up, he sticks to the long road of contacting a maintenance company (not because it’s practical but because it’s cheaper) while she wants to solve the problem by buying a new one, now that she can afford it.
Wanting to defuse the situation, and calm Sama’s desire to buy a new fridge, Magdy suggests they celebrate the couple’s 37th wedding anniversary with friends and their only family, their son (Ali El Tayeb). He, like the rest of the world outside their apartment, remains absent, once again unable to attend due to work. The cheesecake meant for the occasion, stored in the faulty fridge, has spoiled and everyone gets sick. Emad Maher’s editing brings out the humor of the scene.
The experimental Kafkaesque comedy approach that Shafiey is moving with in the film is refreshing and welcome on the Egyptian film scene, where the majority of comedies are only based on punchlines and insults. The absurd maintenance company that Magdy calls offers the main course in Shafiey’s script. The company’s delusional staff and evasive manager (played by veteran comedienne Enam Salaousa) are driven by realities that Egyptians have to deal with amid terrible customer service culture and lack of accountability. The realism of the conversations, and the absurd meanings of it, give the film aitsedge and makes the laughs ring true.
The film shifts into absurdist territory when that company enters the plot. This certified institution with their long waiting-call tones is a maze of overpricing, scams, and evasions. The deranged working class technician (played by Mohamed Radwan) calls himself an engineer and claims to have studied in the US, married an American woman, worked for NATO and the Ministry of Defence on submarines, and designed refrigerators from scratch. Radwan’s character is like the stranger you meet on the train who claims they had a steak with Gandhi and burned flags with Obama. As days stretch into months and the fridge remains unfixed, Magdy files a complaint at the Consumer Protection Agency. More bureaucracy is ahead for the couple.
The film is set entirely inside a middle-class Cairo apartment and shot with an unwavering static camera. Cinematographer Karim Fouad Hakim highlights how the gender roles in Magdy and Sama’s house are taking a toll on their relationship, and how the fridge drama is putting salt on the open wound of a loveless marriage, economic deterioration, an absent son.
The production design is among the film’s most appealing achievements: the dusty, unused and old family PC, jewelry hidden in an old chocolate tin, a plastic stand for onions and potatoes, the plastic vegetable-shaped fridge magnets, and the once-golden 70s furniture. It is a precisely observed portrait of a middle-to-upper-middle-class Egyptian household that has not changed in years. Only the IKEA bowels are off-note on an otherwise impeccable set.
Director, screenwriter: Yasser Shafiey
Cast: Mahmoud Hemida, Shereen, Hana Shiha, Mohamed Radwan, Hanan Youssef, Enam Salousa, Mohamed Abdo, Tamer Nabil, Ahmed Abdel Hamid, Gehad Hossam El Din, Ali El Tayeb.
Cinematography: Karim Fouad Hakim
Editor: Emad Maher
Producer: Rasha Gawdat
Production: Red Star Films, Misr International Films, Film Square Productions, and Filmology
Venue: Cairo Film Festival (Horizons of Arab Cinema)
80 minutes
