Set in a cramped apartment in Giza, Kawthar Younis’ My Girl Friend is built around an instance of contrivance and duplicity. Desperate to share, but forbidden from doing so by social convention, young couple Ali (Marc Haggar) and Sarah (Elham Safieddine) formulate a ruse. Arriving at Sarah’s house disguised as a girl – a fictional friend named Alia – Ali manages to bluff his way past Sarah’s parents and into her bedroom for a supposed study sleep-over. However, the pressures of keeping up the pretence over the course of the evening, and the resulting shift in dynamics, creates a new tension in their relationship.
This is primarily caused by Ali’s insecurities, and the different – apparently undesirable – perspective he gains by pretending to be female. When he arrives at Sarah’s, and they awkwardly bundle him past her parents, the deception feels exciting. Younis and the cinematographer Seifeldin Khaled capture the two teenagers’ intimacy once behind the closed door of Sarah’s bedroom, emphasising their proximity and familiarity. Their comfort with one another is undermined slightly when Sarah makes a joke about Ali, or perhaps Alia’s, bra cup size and Ali feels humiliated and annoyed. There is something, it seems, in Sarah’s assertiveness that unnerves him.
It’s a well-calibrated performance from Haggar, capturing Ali’s apparent confidence and cockiness when he first arrives but both his frustration and embarrassment creep further onto his face as the film progresses. He becomes short with Sarah, who seems unaware of the cardinal errors she has been making. It makes for an interesting dilemma for Ali, who at once is in the middle of an act of circumnavigating old-fashioned social mores that he clearly disagrees with, but when that same subversion is being applied to gender norms, it is far less comfortable. In placing its male lead in the role of a young woman, Younis’ film does an excellent job of drawing attention to even the more ambiguous assumptions and subtleties at play – not least in an uneasy final scene.
Director:Kawthar Younis
Cast: Marc Haggar, Elham Safieddine, Fadel El Garhy, Sonia Farid
Screenplay:Ahmed Essam El Sayed, Kawthar Younis
Producers: Sandro Canaan, Khaled Marei, Mohammed Alomda
Cinematography: Seifeldin Khaled
Editing: Khaled Marei
Sound:Mohamed Fawzy, Mohamed Salah
Production design: Eman Elalby
Production companies: KINO, TRI Pictures (Egpyt)
Venue: Venice Film Festival (Orizzonti)
In Arabic
17 minutes
