‘Perfumed With Mint’: Venice Review

Dir/scr: Muhammed Hamdy. Egypt/France/Tunisia/Qatar. 2024. 113mins

Cairo-born Muhammed Hamdy’s debut characteristic confronts the ghosts of the previous and the best way they hang-out and form the current. Unfolding in a sepulchral gloom, his sombre ghost story develops into a strong meditation on loss, guilt, paranoia and the haunting legacy of an oppressive regime. There are clear affinities with the work of Apichatpong Weerasethakul, and the relevance to so many areas of on-going international battle and division ought to guarantee additional competition screenings following a world premiere in Venice Critics Week.

A thought-provoking reckoning with trauma 

Hamdy is finest often called a cinematographer, profitable an Emmy for his work on  the Oscar-nominated The Sq. (2013) which he additionally co-produced. He acts as his personal cinematographer on Perfumed With Mint, setting a great deal of the the movie in a dense gloom. We first encounter physician Bahaa (Alaa El Din Hamada) as he meets a mom who can’t transfer on from the lack of her son. “My son refuses to die and my coronary heart hurts,” she confides. She then tells the story of a son who left their dwelling and by no means got here again. After three years of looking out, they discovered a physique and it’s 4 years since they buried him. Now, she has been advised he could also be alive, settinmg the themes that may run all through the movie of loss, absence and uncertainty.

Hiding at the hours of darkness shells of deserted buildings in an unnamed deteriorating Egyptian metropolis, Bahaa encounters plenty of his pals and all of them appear to expertise some bodily expression or manifestation of trauma. Bahaa cherishes a letter from a misplaced love. Because the missive grew to become moist it has by no means dried out. He hangs it over a bowl that retains filling with liquid. The gradual drip of water turns into a part of the soundtrack of the movie.

Bahaa’s buddy Mahdy (Mahdy Abo Bahat) has little shoots of mint that sprout from his physique when he’s scared or anxious, however stay dormant when he’s stoned. The hunt for cannabis and the promise of the candy oblivion it’d deliver can be a recurring aspect. One other buddy, Abdo (Eldin) reveals a physique pockmarked with bullet holes and claims: “171 bullets emptied my lungs of air and I bled underneath a tree.”

We assume that every one of those characters are useless or not less than shadows of the individuals they as soon as had been, now endlessly marked by trauma. The movie itself is peppered with tales and reminiscences of the useless and disappeared. It’s a nation the place the whole lot has modified, and everybody wonders what they might have achieved in a different way. Bahaa ponders what his girlfriend may assume if she miraculously returned and located that he had coped by working away and getting stoned along with his pals.

There’s a slight aspect of a post-war thriller to proceedings as Bahaa and Mahdy flee by way of the streets in search of sanctuary in derelict buildings. There’s an echo of Odd Man Out (1946) of their flight and The Third Man (1949) within the big shadows solid on metropolis partitions within the method of Harry Lime. Largely, nonetheless, Perfumed With Mint is a movie of contemplation. The chain-smoking Bahaa is usually seeing staring into area, reflecting on what has occurred and the influence occasions have had on him. The digicam stays static as characters unburden their fears and tragedies in prolonged monologues.

The tip result’s usually difficult viewing however builds right into a thought-provoking reckoning with trauma and the scars it leaves on a nation.