A pitch-black Swedish noir, set in Egypt in the days leading up to the 25TH OF JANUARY REVOLUTION in 2011. The film begins in the streets of Cairo as Noredin (Fares Fares), a cop, extorts money from the shopkeepers in his area. Then, a singer gets killed in a hotel, a Sudanese day-worker cleaning the rooms is witness, plus there are pictures that lead to a high-ranking member of government. The film then follows Noredin as he tries to solve the murder, whilst exposing a culture where corruption is like breathing. First, he’s allowed to investigate, then the case is closed, then it gets re-opened again as the various interests map out their possible profit from the case. No one is ever certain; and no one is completely safe. The question is when does morality revolt? Is it at murder? Of foreigners? Of locals? Of kin?
THE NILE HILTON INCIDENT (2017) is the first film in Tarik Saleh’s Cairo trilogy, but many elements I now recognise as characteristic of Saleh’s work are already evident: the theme of corruption, the filming of streets from inside moving cars, the hand-held camera, the expressive play with focus. This is perhaps his most accessible film, as it’s the most traditionally NOIR: the dark streets, whorehouses, songbirds, the moral maze that is the city, its various layers (the homeless, the drug addicts, the foreign workers), the sexual blackmail, corrupt cops, untouchable upper-classes; the hero whose outward corruption encases a basic decency. What’s really missing, unusually for noir, is desire. Our hero is a widower, who does drink, and he does have sex with the chanteuse, but what really propels him seems to be a search for justice in a world where none is to be had. A classic existential dilemma. For his uncle, life is cheap and there’s money to be made. For our corrupt policeman, there has to be something more; and perhaps he finds it in the closing scene, with the people rising on January 25th, beating him short of injury because ‘we’re not like them’, ie, him. There are a couple of nods to Youssef Chahine films (the chase through an external staircase of a modern building, the group prayer on the busy streets). My admiration for Fares has only increased; he’s been wonderful playing very different characters in each film in the triology. A wonderful noir. On MUBI.
José Arroyo