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On holiday in some beach resort, six friends - Ibrahim (Mohamed
El-Khola'y) and his girlfriend Sara (Dolly Shaheen), Adham (Sherif Mounir)
and his wife Farida (Hend Sabri), Hany (Hani Salama) and his
popstar-on-and-off girlfriend - play with a ouija-board, just for fun.
Still it shocks them when the only word the board spits out is
"betrayal". There is of course more to this story than just
the word "betrayal": Point is, Ibrahim has long longed for
Farida, and is so even now - and Sara knows about this. So when she and
Ibrahim have a fight that very night and break up in the heat of the
argument, she actually takes her own life ... leaving Ibrahim heartbroken,
because even though he felt drawn to Farida, he loved Sara. Thing is
though that Adham is a very jealous man, and not only that, he also always
carries a gun, has hallucinations about talking to his evil self every now
and again, and fantasizes about shooting people - and though he never
does, it seems to be only a matter of time until he explodes. Mariam
(Menna Shalabi) takes care of Ibrahim after Sara's death, and love between
the two seems to gradually blossom, but basically he can't get over Sara
and thus one night she goes to a bar to get drunk - a bar where she meets
Hany, who tries to get over another breakup with his girlfriend, and
bewfore you know it, he and Mariam get friendly, land in bed and have
drunken sex together ... sex that results in pregnancy. Ibrahim is so
upset about Hany having impregnated Mariam that he wants to beat him up,
but this time, Adham acts as the voice of reason and manages to reconcile
them. He is much less reasonable though when he learns that Ibrahim has
a date with Farida and packs his gun to catch them red-handed. Mariam
learns about the date as well, arms herself with her sharpest kitchen
knife and ... it all ends in tragedy! I admit, in written form,
this film sounds pretty exciting, and I have to admit, it's reasonably
well directed (if no masterpiece), well acted, and evewn a few
song-and-dance numbers are well-placed. The problem of the film is clearly
its screenplay, which is basically overly wordy, so much so that the film
is not the thriller it could have been but a formulaic soap opera with a
few violent bits. Quite simply put, the film spends to much time making
the same points over and over again, adds a few too many subplots to the
basic storyline, and seemingly does everything to avoid too much tension
or suspense. Now with a tighter script that would have thrown out about
half an hour of screentime (it runs 1 hour 50), this could have been quite
an entertaining (if not great) thriller, as it is, it's actually quite a
bore.
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