Xiaodan He and Joseph Antaki | Cairo Calling / 2005

mother trouble

by Douglas Messerli

 

Joseph Antaki (screenplay), Xiaodan He and Joseph Antaki (directors) Cairo Calling / 2005 [8 minutes]

 

This likeable gay comedy would have been at home in the Hollywood movies of the 1960s such as Peter Tewksbury’s Sunday in New York (1963), Gene Saks Barefoot in the Park (1967), and dozens of other such films stretching into Ang Lee’s The Wedding Banquet of 1993, where mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers suddenly show up causing havoc for the big-city reprobate son or brother. One might also almost describe it as a sub-genre in shorter gay films, usually involving couples of vastly different ethnicities, as in Ang’s glib feature film and in this short film.

     Ahmed, an Egyptian-born gay man (Joseph Antaki) living in New York City, has nearly everything he could ask for: a good job, a nice loft apartment, and a sexy lover, Eric (Francois Bryon). But then there’s that call from his mother, living in Cairo, who has just arrived in New York to bring havoc and chaos into his life.

     The Mother’s (Claudette Del Burgo) first grumblings are simply about her son’s digs: what kind of apartment has no walls! She quickly resolves her distaste for her son’s moderne leather furnishings, by covering them over with colorful blankets and pillows. She’s also a bit troubled by the ease with which Ahmed’s co-worker (the two work together out of Ahmed’s loft), Layla (Barbara Alexandre) comes and goes, while also fully noting that she’s a black woman (although the mother assures Layla that she’s “opened-minded”).

     But the real reason she has traveled the long distance from Cairo to New York, of course, is to bring her son pictures of the 12 beauties she’s selected for him to choose so that he might marry. He refuses to even consider it, but she digs in, offering up any one he doesn’t choose to his “friend” Eric, who by this time she’s also met without even asking why he might be hanging around.

      Upon one attempt to explain the situation, Ahmed begins to tell her that the reason he is so disinterested in her “harem” is that he is in love with someone else, but before he can even go further with his explanation, the mother presumes, that he’s having an affair with Layla, and begins arranging for a marriage between the two of them.

      Trying to get her out of the house just long enough for them to have sex, Eric and Ahmed finally coat up the old gal and send her on a long walk with Layla around the park, during which they quickly strip and begin to engage in sex. But of course, the mother arrives just as they are about to climax.      

     She may be shocked, but she’s also quite stubborn, refusing now to return home until her son marries.

   At the wedding, the camera pans on the wedding party, beginning with Layla, standing at Ahmed’s left, so that for a moment we fear he may have sold out the way The Wedding Banquet son did, but as the camera pans further, we recognize that the other groom is Eric. The wedding is performed and the troublesome mother returns to Cairo, able now to tell everyone her son is married—although she clearly doesn’t explain to aunts to which sex.

    Canadian director Xiaodan was born in China; she has directed several short and feature films.

     

Los Angeles, September 6, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (September 2024).