"The Other"

So...I just finished watching Youssef Chahine's "The Other" for my Comm. 399 class.

I wasn't quite sure what to expect from an Egyptian film from 1999 at first. I've only taken one one other class dealing with the Middle East and its culture - and aside from learning some pretty cool sounding words all that class did was pretty much emphasize points I kind of already knew (i.e. Muslims are not bad people, Islam shares some basic tenets with other major religions, women typically dress modestly etc.).

This movie didn't really emphasize or showase any of that. It did at one point, poke fun at the head-to-toe dress some women wear though...I totally didn't see that comming nor did I expect all the sexual references (especially after reading the book for this class).

Another thing I totally wasn't expecting - the heavy French influence on the film. The title, the credits etc. were all in french and there were a couple of major references within the film to France. Guess colonialism is still taking its toll on the Arab film industry.

On the whole, the story was an exotic twist on Romeo and Juliet. Aside from a few cheesy romantic lines - I have to say I really liked it (once my eyes adjusted to the horrible streaming quality and I got past my hatred of subtitles - especially white ones). Lol.