NOS correspondent Daisy Mohr from Beirut:
“In the Arab world, the controversy was already there before Perfect Strangers well and good appeared. The fact that critics are particularly busy with it in Egypt may well reflect the period that the conservative, patriarchal country is going through. There is much to do about women’s social freedoms: complex developments that still reverberate from the #metoo movement in Egypt. The underwear scene in the film is widely discussed and criticized.
The amount of homophobic reactions is also not immediately surprising. Obviously not everyone in the Arab world is ready for a movie with these kinds of themes and dialogues. There is often a generational difference: young people in many Arab countries believe that much more is possible and allowed. But usually that happens secretly and parents know nothing about it.
Some of the cast is Lebanese and the film is set in Lebanon, a country where there are more freedoms compared to the rest of the region. Here in Beirut I hear many people say that the film portrays daily reality very well and that that reality is perhaps more intense than in the film. That it is hypocritical to pretend that these are Western themes that do not play a role in the Arab world at all. The film is therefore acclaimed by many.”
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