If there’s one trait that best characterizes Gulf cinema, it’s an undying love for all things melodramatic–and the Bahraini film ‘Longing’ is certainly no exception. In telling the story of two families forced to confront their differences as they struggle to coexist in one household, director Hussein al-Hulaybi relies a bit too heavily on the exaggerated theatrics of crying mothers, wailing daughters, despondent fathers, and angry sons. With all subtleties exorcised, the end result feels more like a cruel satire of Gulf aesthetics rather than the somber analysis of social dynamics which al-Hulaybi clearly intended it to be.
After the death of his lifelong friend and neighbor, Bu Ali, widower Bu Jassim decides to bring the two broken families together by marrying Bu Ali’s wife. The two households merge and, despite having slightly different religious beliefs–one family is Sunni, the other Shiite–they manage to live in harmony for a couple of years.
Eventually, though, the children grow up and begin to follow their own paths to different and contradicting ideologies. Upon becoming a university student, Issa grows a beard and starts ranting about global conspiracy theories designed to “destroy” Islam (including his own government’s secularism), while his stepbrother and former best friend, Ali, joins another, slightly less extremist group (signified by the members’ comparatively shorter beards).
Both men regularly lash out at their own sisters, as well as each other’s, for dressing inappropriately or hanging out with the wrong crowd. Meanwhile, the eldest (and as such, the most sensible) son Jassim is about to leave his family and fiancée Mariam–his step-sister–to continue his studies in Egypt.
With a time-line that begins in the early 1980s and lasts for twenty-odd years, it’s obvious that al-Hulaybi was attempting to depict his onscreen family as a thinly-veiled metaphor for Bahraini society–and the permutations it has undergone within the past two decades. At one point in the film, a minor character goes so far as to explain to a confused Ali: “Your house is a small sample of Bahrain’s society.
Issues such as the Iran-Iraq war and the Soviets’ involvement in Afghanistan are all brought up, although by two older men who–besides meeting in a café every few years to discuss these topics and their supposed repercussions–have little to do with the plot. The nature of secularism is also debated by main characters Ali and Issa, but these scenes amount to little more than superficial arguments between two sides with equally superficial mentalities.
Given these debilitating conceptual problems, it hardly matters how badly acted ‘Longing’ is. Out of the entire cast, not a single performer comes anywhere close to approaching believability. Paper-thin characterizations, an unnecessarily large ensemble, and the fact that everyone in Bahrain dresses the same, make it almost impossible to differentiate between the characters.
To add to the confusion, the typo-laden subtitles–inexplicably missing in some parts of the film–are rendered useless when superimposed over the film’s endless parade of white galabiyas.
The overall look doesn’t do the film any favors, either. Shot on what appears to be video, the image is grainy, and the sound atrocious. The director neither uses this lack of resources to his advantage, nor does he attempt to mask them–instead, he just goes on with his business, making one of the most unattractive films this reviewer has seen in a long time.
The sets are horribly, depressingly furnished, featuring lime green walls and plastic tablecloths. Worse still is how, over the span of twenty years, not a single piece of furniture has moved–or even slightly changed position–in the family’s living room, where most of the action takes place. The same applies to the film’s characters, who appear to be resistant to the aging process. Characters make the leap from child to adult, and then remain static.
Despite having a decidedly unsubtle approach, al-Hulaybi’s shambolic direction ends up adding to the confusion instead of clarifying matters. At times, it seems as if Ali and Issa were gay lovers more than anything else. And while that would have undoubtedly made for a much bolder and potentially interesting film, it’s more likely just a combination of awkward shots and bad acting, made worse by the awkward subtitles that have characters frequently advising Ali and Issa not to “lie on each other.”
The last act sees al-Hulaybi lose what little grip he had on the film as events spiral entirely out of control. Someone gets stabbed, and the consequences are ridiculous: a woman loses her loved one and, in the film’s unintentional highlight, screams: “Everyone has his birds come back! Drink from your drops, my ailing heart,” before attempting to drown herself in knee-high water.
Failing on every imaginable level, ‘Longing’ is an embarrassing waste of time, meager resources, and paltry talent.
