Comedy drama starring Saïd Taghmaoui and featuring Juliette Lewis. Ali, an Egyptian living in London, wants to be a screenwriter, but his life isn't going according to the script. Forced to flit between a succession of rented rooms, he encounters characters as bizarre as a Marilyn Monroe impersonator and a blind woman who's convinced that he's the reincarnation of her long-dead Egyptian lover.
Here's a movie that proves the British film industry is becoming as multi-ethnic as Britain itself. It's directed by an Anglophile Egyptian, and stars the French-born Moroccan Saïd Taghmaoui (from La Haine) as Ali, a student from Egypt struggling to become a successful screenwriter before the expiry of his visa. Essentially a series of encounters with characters Ali meets as he flits in and out of a succession of rented London rooms, this combination of drama, comedy and tinges of the fantastical does not really gel. The least successful characters tend to be the most contrived, including a Marilyn Monroe impersonator (US "import" Juliette Lewis) and a blind woman (Anna Massey) who believes Ali to be the reincarnation of her long-dead Egyptian lover. However, vibrant performances and realistic location shooting just about shade things in its favour.
| role | name |
|---|---|
| Ali | Saïd Taghmaoui |
| Linda | Juliette Lewis |
| Mark | Rupert Graves |
| Sarah Stevenson | Anna Massey |
| Ahmed | Karim Belkhadra |
| Vivienne | Clémentine Célarié |
| role | name |
|---|---|
| Director | Khaled El Hagar |
