(2007; English, Arabic, Hebrew) Invited to perform for the opening ceremonies of the Arab Cultural Center in Bet Hatikva in Israel, the eight Egyptian members of the Alexandria Police Ceremonial Band mistakenly take a bus from an airport to Petah Tikva, a isolated desert town. "No Arab Cultural Center here," Dina (Ronit Elkabetz), the middle-aged, attractive owner of a restaurant, informs Colonel Tewfiq Zakaria (Sasson Gabai): "No culture at all." Also she says: "No more bus today."

This understated, cross-cultural comedy from writer/director Eran Kolirin - when the Egyptians want to communicate without being understood by the Israelis, they speak in Arabic; the Israelis do the same in Hebrew with the Egyptians; otherwise everyone uses English - achieves subtle incursions across one another's emotional borders.

Scheduled to perform the next evening (the embassy will help with transportation) without a hotel in which to stay for the night and little Israeli currency, the men in pale-blue uniforms are permitted to spend their Egyptian money for food and graciously offered accommodations. The colonel reminds his men that they are to conduct themselves at all times with dignity as representatives of their country.

Dina takes Colonel Zakaria and his young, occasionally insubordinate violinist and trumpet player Haled (Saleh Bakri) to her apartment. Her unemployed friend Avrum (Uri Gavriel) reluctantly (it's his wife Lea's birthday) accepts Simon (Khalifa Natour), who plays clarinet and sometimes conducts, along with two other band members; the remaining three spend the night in the restaurant.

"Very quiet here," says Haled. "Dead," agrees Dina. When she takes Tewfiq out for the evening to a nearly deserted diner and he expresses nervousness at people's staring at them, she tells him to ignore them: "People here are in the Stone Age." Wanting "just to look on the city," Haled joins Papi (Shlomi Avraham) and his cousin along with two girls to the skating rink where he (unable to skate as is Papi) gently provides the teenage boy ("I hear sea in my ears") with clues and cues for getting to first base with Yula (Rinat Matatov).

Sitting on a bench outside (a park where one must imagine the grass, the children playing and laughing, and the sea), Dina, a divorcee without children, nudges Tewfiq into talking - "The most important thing in the world is fishing" with the sound in the morning like a symphony - eventually about his deceased wife and their only son.

In the other house filled with awkwardness and "tons of silence," after the wife has departed following an argument, Simon plays on the clarinet his incomplete concerto.

"We were all in love with Omar Sharif," Dina confesses of her childhood affection for the actor and Egyptian movies on Friday nights: "My life. Arab movie." When the colonel goes to bed, declining her offer of some wine, Haled, who has returned from his sightseeing, stays up with Dina.

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Copyright © 2008 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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