(France/Egypt/Qatar, 85 min.)
Dir. Namir Abdel Messeh, Writ. Namir Abdel Messeh, Nathalie
Najem, Anne Paschetta
With the declaration of Habemus
Papam fresh out of the oven, Wednesday felt like an unbelievably lucky
night for DiverCiné to have
programmed the French/Egyptian/Qatari co-production The Virgin, the Copts, and Me (La
Vierge, les Coptes, et moi). On a day on which #VeronicaMars was out-trending #PopeFrancisI,
this documentary’s comical exploration of faith in the new millennium seemed
especially appropriate. Director Namir Abdel Messeh takes a sceptical look at
the mania of the Catholic Church by exploring a few acts of divine apparition that
have graced his native Egypt over the years. The erratic filmmaker, however,
enjoys a shotgun-style of filmmaking and eventually sets his sights on a
subject that could restore viewers’ faith in the family.
Namir decides that such a journey is best unearthed via a
return to the origin of the Virgin’s relationship with Egyptian Catholics. An
apparition in 1968 at a church in the town of Zeitoun offers the starting point
for Namir’s quest. In Zeitoun, the Virgin allegedly appeared before a mass of
people, all of whom—like Namir and his mother—have differing accounts of what
they saw.
Namir films a search that scours Zeitoun for witnesses to
the Virgin Mary’s apparition at a local church. The director encounters a cast
of colourful character with diverse reactions: some swear they saw Mary appear
before their eyes; while others say they observed smoke, light, and a presence;
and others laugh and say that Mother Mary came nowhere near the town. Marked by
an amicable religious divide between the Catholics and the Muslims, plus an
underlying tension from the minority Copts, of which the director’s family was
a part before they moved to France and converted to Christianity, this journey
to Egypt shows a far more amenable portrait of difference and tolerance between
the different religious groups. Only a kerfuffle or two related to filming prompts
any note of religious conflict. Not a mention is made of the Arab Spring
movement until the film’s ending credits when Namir’s producer suggests that
distribution deals might be easier to land if he could find a way to tie his
quest to the revolution that’s going on in Egypt. “What revolution?” Namir
replies as if his holy scavenger hunt has him wrapped in a veil of humorous ignorance.
The Virgin, the Copts,
and Me is well made, fun, and engaging in spite of Abdel Messeh’s rambling,
almost aimless approach to the subject. It looks as if the director wandered
into Egypt without much pre-production and planned to shoot the movie on the
fly. (Eh, it worked for Casablanca.) The
film becomes even more sporadic when the director’s French backers abandon him
when he demands more time to allow the project to follow through fruition.
Namir’s mother is a real character of the film, though, as
she spends much of the running time insisting on the stupidity of the project,
yet aiding it to the very end. Siham insists that her family not appear on
camera—much of the film depicts her in some sort of rant—because she doesn’t
want her life exposed on film. Her family jumps into the frame regardless and
enjoys the chance to make history in their modest surroundings.
The Virgin, the Copts,
and Me might appeal to fans of the recent festival hit Where Do We Go Now? thanks to its
familial farce about religion and gender. The film nevertheless shows that a
much better film can be achieved when a boring/bullshit idea is abandoned and
the project takes on a spur-of-the-moment jaunt into creative collaboration. As
Namir moves on to reconnect with his Egyptian relatives and films their
engagement with the Virgin, he takes the film from dry navel-gazing to full-on Wag the Dog farce. The film is a crowd
pleaser even though—or if only because—much of the film features simple
portraits of family members mugging at the camera in a “Hey, look, Ma – I’m on
TV!” kind of fashion. It’s all a grassroots filmmaking affair, too, so it’s
just as relevant to the Veronica Mars
debate as it is to the religious musings that it undertakes, but mostly abandons
as it moves along.
Rating: ★★★ (out of ★★★★★)
The Virgin, the Copts, and Me screened in Ottawa on Wednesday,
March 13 as part of the Canadian Film Institute’s DiverCiné festival.