About a month ago, I watched the funniest Eritrean movie.  It is too bad that it was trying to be a love story with a message.  Which makes it the campiest.

Here’s the digest.  A cabbie is married to a beauty queen.    We are told, via sound effects and camera angles that he is not the sharpest tool in the tool box.   In case we miss all the hints, every other character in the movie tells us that he is stupid.  She cheats on him.  We don’t know what her lover does, but he speaks in tortured prose, wears a suit, is seen being picked up at the airport, and has a lot of free time.   Let’s call him a hustler.  The hustler has a wife and two kids, a boy (in college, but not Mai Nefhi) and a girl (in high school, but not in Sawa.) Or maybe it is three kids.  Word gets around: the hustler's wife is crushed and loses her sanity.  The bright college boy drops out of college, and the girl rebels by hanging out at the usual places her father does.  It all ends very badly, of course, and Fihira is there at the end to sing the blues when the credits are rolling.

The cabbie and his model wife live in a parallel universe which also, coincidentally, has a country called Eritrea.  In that Eritrea (Eritrea II), there is no hunger, no war, no deprivation and no moving permits.  Just married folks cheating on their spouses, living in villas, traveling to the beach, clubbing and living large.

Standard soap opera, so where is the unintentionally funny stuff?   Oh, pick any scene and leave your credulity outside: 

• The humble taxi-driver (who wears a suit, of course) is married to a beauty queen (of course.)  And lives in a villa fit for a king.   Probably a wedding gift from his father (who also wears a suit.) His wife, the beauty queen, is a fashion model who, we are told, year-after-year gets crowned for her beauty.  We are not told why the beauty queen married a humble cabbie.   Especially when his best man is a midget.  Maybe because he owns a spacious villa?  Or she needed a ride?

• Nor are we told if an Arab who witnesses her spontaneous belly-dancing at a club and is so taken by her moves that he tells her she has a future is…what is the word? Blind.   I can’t make up my mind if it is her boat-size shoes or the clunky moves, but she definitely deserves an award for the belly dancing, if they give out awards for worst moves.   I dare you to watch it without laughing, which I am sure was not what the director had in mind.

• At a bar, the cabbie’s best friend, the midget, dances on table top to the Bee Gees' Staying Alive.  I think this is meant to be comic relief but you will be weirded out.

• Check out the scene where the distraught wife of the cheating hustler goes to the graveyard and tells the grave-digger to reserve a hole for her because she is a dead woman walking.  Having created the ultimate groaner, the epicenter of melodrama, the director tops himself: he embellishes it by having her carry oversized flowers last seen at the funeral of Lady Di.  But wait, there is more, he is not done yet:  this is accompanied with sound effects straight from The Exorcist, some Gregorian chant.  It is a riot.

• But my favorites are the voice-overs.  This is a trick directors use to communicate to us what a character is thinking: they close up on the face, and through the magic of audio, we hear what they are thinking.  In this case, of course everybody does a voice over—with an echo.  The reason I know that this is Eritrea II and not the real one is because in the real one, Eritreans are stoic people.  In this one, the inhabitants are amazed by everything.   Dad cheating on mom?  Loud voice-over from son:  What a cruel world this is! Student dropped out from college?  Loud voice-over from professor: How unbearable this world is!  Your best friend losing her mind?  Loud voice over from best friend:  Stop this world, I want to get off!    It is a good thing the voice-overs are loud: if they weren't, you wouldn’t hear them over the noise of your laughter.

• I told you it ends badly, and you are thinking crime of passion? No, no.  I won’t spoil it by telling you but it involves two police cars.  With flashing sirens.   A classic is born.

Of course, even campy movies have great scenes that betray real talent.  In this case, it is the girl that corrupts the daughter of the cheating hustler.   She is a scene-stealer and a great actress.  The cinematography, the editing is all very well done. And the dialogue, specially the one between the two girls mentioned above, clearly indicates that the writer is talented—it is just that he was misdirected in this movie.  And since the writer is the director, he has nobody to blame but himself.

I have a theory, of course.  I blame it on the influence of Indian movies.   It is all there: the melodrama, the dancing-for-no-reason, the voice-overs, the inappropriate sound effects.  What is missing is authenticity—too few Abashawel scenes (the best part of the movie) and too much clubbing.

Oh, yes, the movie is called “FetiHe do Kmr’Aweki?” (should I divorce and re-marry you?), which is a line from an old song.  A better title for the director would have been, “demsise do k’QedHaki” (should I erase this movie and re-shoot it?)