Movie Muse by Peter Oppenheimer
It only adds to our appreciation of the film to know that the 8 year old lead actress, who provides the perspective and emotional ballast for the entire film, has never acted before and was in reality discovered helping her mother sell flowers to passing motorists on a busy Cairo thoroughfare. While they are working on the birthday party decorations, Nelly, ponders her birthday “blowing out the candles” wish. Toha, who has never celebrated her own birthday, asks what’s that? When Nelly explains, Toha ponders the tradition and responds that she has tried to pray from time to time, but that it doesn’t work. Nelly becomes indignant and says “Does too.” “Then tell me one time in which it worked?” Toha asks. Nelly looks around the room and claims, “That doll house.” “Any other time?” Toha asks, her skepticism visibly wavering. “Yes, that make-up table too.”
Much respect and gratitude to the California Film Institute for putting on, and pulling off, the recently concluded 2025 Mill Valley Film Festival, which this year featured 138 films, from 40 countries, shown on 7
screens, in 4 theaters, over 10 days.
Among the several excellent films I saw, I want to mention, in passing, a lumi- nous, funny and heartwarming, Moroccan film, Calle Malaga , showcasing a wonderful depiction of grace and tenacity in the life of a 74 year old woman in Tangiers (played by the justly celebrated Spanish actress, Carmen Maura), who, in spite of living alone for many years since her husband died, has carved out a cozy niche for herself in the neighborhood and community in which she lives. The crisis arrives when her financially strapped daughter, who lives in Spain, comes to Morocco to inform her mother that she plans to sell the flat and that her mother will have to uproot and come live with her daughter in Spain. The mother’s plot to circumvent her daughters plan is fanciful, daring and surprisingly romantic. There’s some definite movie magic involved in my favorite of the 13 films I watched, Happy Birthday , Egypt’s submission for Best Foreign Language Film at next year’s Oscars.
We’re pretty sure she’s fibbing, but Toha’s eyes get big, “Really?” “Yes, really. And if you help me get a birthday party tonight, I will give you one of my candles to make a wish on.” Toha almost swoons with joy at the thought, and her fervor to help Nelly with her party even increases. This is a plot point that returns at a cru- cial moment. Early on, we don’t know quite what is the nature of Toha and Nelly’s relationship. Are they sisters? Friends? Or what? Not much later we learn that Toha is a live-in, child maid, employed by Nelly’s mother to do household chores, including caring for Nelly’s grandmother. On the afternoon of the party, which initially is being planned against the wishes of Nelly’s mother, Toha, much to her shock and distress, is sent away to spend the night with her own family in a village at some distance from the city. To Toha, this separation from Nelly on her big night is unbearable. The plot thickens as Toha schemes to get back to Nelly’s party and acts on her scheme. Suffice it to say that much drama and suspense ensues, which I will not spoil here.
The movie opens in darkness. We hear the rustling of sheets and the excited, hushed tones of two children shaking off their sleep and turning on the lights that reveal them to be in a playroom with books and games and bright, colorful, art materials. The two girls (aged 8 and 12) set right to work decorating a dress for the older girl’s birthday that day, and hand drawing invitations to pass out to some classmates and various relatives to come to the party. There seems to be an almost religious fervor to the girls’ talk about the party, which of course, “will be the best party ever.” The story then unfolds over the next 36 hours of highs and lows, loyalty and heartbreak, lessons learned, and the strictures and constraints of social hierarchies laid bare. The magic of this film is that we navigate all of the above through the eyes, heart, and innocence of the younger girl, Toha. Given the innocence and purity of Toha, circumstances and characters appear very differently to her than they do to us, and consequently she reacts and behaves in the face of events very differently than we would or might even think she should.
Happy Birthday , in addition to its submission for an Oscar, has already garnered awards for Best International Narrative Feature, Best Screenplay and the Nora Ephron Award at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, and indeed won an Audience Award at this year’s Mill Valley Film Festival, all well-deserved for first time fea- ture-length director Sarah Goher and her co-writer and longtime creative partner, Mohamed Diab. It may be a few months before Happy Birthday receives a theatrical release and could be a few more before landing online for streaming (check back on just- watch.com), but this is one not to be missed, with its story of sweet innocence, coupled with an incisive, and sometimes even searing, critique of the inequities, injustices and indignities of the hierarchical structures of socio-economic class, which exist not only in Egypt but in our very own U.S. of A. as well.
It is almost uncanny the extent to which Happy Birthday allows, if not compels, us to see the twists and turns of the plot through the eyes of an innocent, pure- hearted young protagonist.
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