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For three more days Mubi.com is streaming Yousry Nasrallah’s After the Battle for free as part of their Dialogue of Cultures International Film Festival. I posted an overview of the program over the weekend, but I feel that After the Battle merits special attention. The movie addresses recent social upheaval in Egypt, and more often in personal, rather than political, terms. As an outsider who’s learned about Egypt’s ongoing crisis solely through reading news reports, I found the film’s human-interest approach eye-opening. Some European critics have complained about the film’s melodramatic nature, which can make this topical work feel strangely old-fashioned. Yet Nasrallah employs melodramatic tropes knowingly, using them to bring a sense of urgency to the film’s feminist politics and cultural interrogation, neither of which registers as straightforward or self-righteous.
Reem decides the best course of action is to befriend Mahmoud’s family so that she might help them out of solidarity rather than charity. Of course, this is easier said than done, given the cultural differences separating this bourgeoise from this working-poor family. Neither Reem’s nor Mahmoud’s peers can understand what the two might have in common. Her coworkers accuse her of disingenuousness; his wife (a traditional, submissive type lacking in feminist consciousness) thinks Reem is spending time with Mahmoud just to have an affair with him. The heroine manages to dispel some of these doubts, but new challenges arise daily in converting this family to the reformist cause. The most frightening of these challenges comes in the form of Mahmoud’s wealthy patron, who rules over his district like a mob boss and uses the threat of violence to keep his constituents in line.
