In his directorial debut, “Peppermint,” Emmy-winning Egyptian cinematographer Mohamed Hamdy delivers a visually arresting but slow-paced, surreal work that captures the discontent of generations. Between the stunning images of the opening and closing shots, there’s a plateau of meaning and form that persists for long stretches—a shame, though that stagnation is essentially the point. While it’s unlikely to hold even the most forgiving viewer’s attention for its entire run, it nonetheless features some of the most compelling visual poetry of any film at this year’s Toronto Film Festival, a haunting elegy for the dead.
In progressive side-by-side shots lasting minutes at a time, Hamdi’s camera hovers over mint leaves close to the ground, while faint prayers and whispers permeate the soundscape. This whimsical and enjoyable introduction soon gives way to a methodical introduction to Bahaa (Alaa Eldin Hamada), a desperate doctor treating a middle-aged woman for what she describes as her inability to let go of her dead son—whose spirit she sees everywhere she looks. Hamdi’s long takes here capture a sense of spiritual crisis, of people utterly lost in the face of death.
But the film doesn’t return to this subtle revelation of tortured hearts until near the end. At the same time, it tells a strange and fantastical story set in the deserted alleys of Ciaro, where Bahaa and his friend Mahdi (Mahdi Abu Bahat), a troubled man who grows mint leaves from his hair, escape from disembodied shadows that haunt them. The mint-induced illness is common among Cairo’s youth, and seems to be alleviated by smoking hashish, leading to an extended second act that plays like a biting comedy, albeit wrapped in a wonderfully evocative use of light streaming through windows and pitch black, which accentuates both space and emptiness.
Bahaa is also a man in love, carrying with him a precious message that never seems to dry up after someone has soaked it for a while. The scars of the past are revealed through subtle magical realism, as the characters sit and smoke, simply waiting to move undetected from one place to another.
Hamdy’s skillful creation of mood is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, viewers unfamiliar with modern Egyptian politics are likely to draw meaning from his images. These characters have lost all hope for the future and are approaching middle age, on the run from the creeping spectres of fascism. They would rather assuage their pain through poisoning than face the dead. In this sense, “Peppermint” is a deeply political work that invites casual curiosity from afar. For those who do, it reflects the deep fatigue of a post-Arab Spring generation that inadvertently replaced one tyrant with another—Mohamed Morsi with Abdel Fattah el-Sisi—and has been protesting ever since.
On the other hand, this weary discontent is conveyed so clearly that it’s easy to get a feel for the film’s tone from the start—and from there, the film rarely explores its own imagery or shifts in meaning. Long lulls involve monotonous, politically charged conversations, but everyone seems to be talking about the same topics from scene to scene. A few characters offer poetic commentary, but these become part of a monotonous exploration of national and cultural moods.
But as the film reaches its quiet climax, it finally achieves the aesthetic and thematic shifts it has been lacking. Hamdy’s success in producing a film that features so much wasted time seems oddly apt for a story that contemplates this very idea and how it empties people of their substance. When the film flourishes in its final act, it does so with a poignant, stark, and tense visual inquiry into what happens to young people when their spiritual wounds are not allowed to heal, and when their calls to action seem more muted and distant with each passing political movement. It is a film that requires deep, contemplative patience, but it is very much worth the wait.
