In the hands of a director who loves his characters, the term “spare” to describe the style of a film should in no way imply a lack of warmth. On the contrary, minimalism can contain the essence of a story which might otherwise be constricted when set in a more distracting, less generously proportioned framework. Such is the case with Mohammed Hammad’s virtuosic control of style and subject in “Safe Exit,” his long-awaited sophomore feature that premiered in the Berlinale’s Panorama program earlier this year. Rigorous in form without sacrificing its emotional power, the film addresses outsider status and the fear of terrorism in contemporary Cairo, proving that Hammad’s confident grasp, evident in his 2016 debut “Withered Green,” is the real deal.
On the outside, the challenges were great. The Christian male protagonist Samaan (Marwan Waleed) is a socially awkward young man traumatized by a terrorist incident that led to his father’s murder. Hampered by his inability to express himself, he records his thoughts in a journal heard in voice-over; the device could easily have been exposition-heavy, yet Hammad’s ultra-tight script avoids any feeling of didacticism. Instead, it concisely reveals Samaan’s ordeal when younger of being kidnapped by ISIS terrorists in Libya together with other Coptic families, and the survival guilt he lives with when he was let go.
Samaan works the night shift as a security guard in an apartment building that, like so many similar buildings in Cairo, is a microcosm of class and economic disparity — in which a coldly unpleasant lobby gives no sense of either the well-maintained apartments nor the rabbit-warren of illegal constructions on the roof where the young man lives. Needing to pay a lawyer to help his brother in detention following an altercation, Samaan makes a deal with a resident (Magda Mounir) hiding her terrorist son Abdullah (Hazem Essam) in her home, by which Samaan signals the arrival of police so the guy can hide in a rooftop water-tank when the building is being searched.
An on-site doctor’s office draws Fatimah (Noha Foad), an undocumented, illiterate Muslim woman suffering from seizures. Discovering that charity cases are only seen the following day, she gives herself to daytime security guard Amm Araby (Samer Al Miniawy), hoping for a place to sleep the night, but the guy chases her away afterwards and Samaan reluctantly allows her to stay over. Whereas Samaan is almost pathologically unassertive, Fatimah knows how to work her smile as well as her body, covering stark vulnerability with a flinty sense of self-protection.
Director-writer Hammad subtly adds layers to each character, refusing to allow either one to be reduced to mere victimhood. Samaan has written a novel — revealingly titled “Who Am I?” — which he hopes to get published, only to discover that the publisher charges production costs to the author. Fatimah’s seizures are diagnosed as symptoms of an operable brain tumor, but with no papers (despite being Egyptian), she’s ineligible for state-sponsored healthcare. The hesitant, unexpected rapport that develops between these two marginalized people holds out the hope of redemption, only to be dashed in a moment of panic mixed with blind cruelty.
Every scene is meticulously constructed (the storyboards could make an exhibition on their own), with Mohammed El Sharqawy’s camera remaining fixed apart from occasional slow zooms and a moment when hope itself seems to prompt a gentle movement, when Fatimah tells Samaan that a medallion of the Virgin Mary she nicked from him has become a good luck charm. Though his apartment has a garish flashing picture of Mary, he admits to not being a believer; one senses the decoration is a holdover from when his father was alive and it was still possible to trust in the prospect of supernatural protection.
There’s a beauty in watching the two lead actors together, each attuned to their character’s distinct kind of physicality. For relative newcomer Marwan Waleed, that means tense body movements and a downcast tilt to his head, reflecting the psychological toll of having been trapped in a locked van when kidnapped in Libya. Noha Foad, swathed in sober black that she manages to make both restrained and borderline provocative, equally inhabits her role, her movements discreetly sensuous when she knows she’s being watched. Her fragile command of every scene befits the character, never more so than in a close-up as she berates the Virgin for abandoning her: a Muslim, talking to the Christian divine mother, searching for hope. It’s a great testament to Waleed’s talents that his more interior projection holds his own alongside Foad’s unassailable warmth.
The title is unsurprisingly a misnomer, as there is no safe exit to be found. Hammad’s favored way of shooting interiors involves obliquely positioned walls where we see two rooms at the same time, each studiously lit with strong directional illumination emphasizing the darkness outside the luminous beams. Unexpectedly bright colors in Samaan’s apartment, with its views over Cairo, offer tantalizing prospects of a better tomorrow which fail to arrive. No wonder the Egyptian censors have so far only allowed the film to be screened at the El Gouna Film Festival.
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