There’s a stilted, cleaning soap opera high quality to Hany Khalifa’s “Flight 404,” Egypt’s submission to the Academy Awards. It by no means fairly transcends these visible and narrative trappings, however its story of a lady escaping her previous, en path to her Mecca pilgrimage, is led by a deeply layered efficiency from Mona Zaki. Whereas the actress brings nuance and fearsome emotional dedication to her function, the movie is usually restrained by drama so frustratingly opaque that it veers into comical territory.

The diligent Ghada (Zaki) works at an upscale actual property firm in Cairo, and makes positive to take breaks for her fajr, or every day Islamic prayer, which doesn’t look like a precedence for most individuals round her. Nevertheless, “Flight 404” is much from the conservative screed such a backdrop would possibly counsel. The plot is about in movement when Ghada’s midday prayers are interrupted by a telephone name, detailing her estranged mom extorting a younger relative for money, a splendidly symbolic incidence of the previous interfering along with her current piety — a working theme.

Ghada, the movie slowly unveils, was as soon as a high-end escort, although the movie dances round this verbiage. Maybe that is to get round Egyptian cinema’s censorious norms, which lends credence to Khalifa’s initially hazy strategy to particulars and relationships, as Ghada prepares to embark on her hajj to Mecca. Nevertheless, it isn’t lengthy earlier than each side of the film begins to really feel equally scattered and vague. Ghada’s mom reveals up at her office to shake her down, and is hit by a automobile and subsequently hospitalized, although she’s seldom talked about once more.

Granted, this hospitalization seems to set a domino impact in movement. The associated fee leads Ghada to trace down outdated connections from her previous life, from madams to once-regular johns, so as to facilitate land offers, or make good on outdated favors, or pay discover cash for her Mecca trio, or … properly, the record is lengthy. The revolving door of supporting characters trace at Ghada’s previous via expository reminiscing, however these scenes seldom make clear the current, on what she’s really attempting to attain (logistically or emotionally) or how returning to her previous modifications or challenges her past superficial notions.

The movie’s key flip entails an nameless, high-rolling potential consumer recognizing Ghada again in one among her outdated haunts and requesting her companies, regardless that she’s left her outdated profession behind in favor of a veil and a extra simple non secular path. The query of whether or not or not she’ll return to her outdated self goes hand in hand with the diploma to which the boys (and typically girls) round her will even allow her to dwell life on her new phrases, pointing towards a social cloth that retains her emotionally entrapped. What’s extra, the film’s frank, informal depiction of her associates and former colleagues ensures that Ghada by no means turns into a proxy for regressive, anti-sexwork views, since her decisions are framed as hers, and hers alone — and one among many potential choices. Nevertheless, what Ghada is definitely a proxy for is usually obscure as properly.

The symbolism related along with her prayers comes up now and again, as when she washes her toes (a standard pre-prayer cleaning) within the fancy, trendy lavatory sink of a former affiliate, whose costly residence isn’t outfitted for such rituals. Nobody else round her appears notably involved with traditions to which she now clings as a way to depart her previous behind. Nevertheless, as understated as a few of these gestures towards theme might be, the film’s precise drama unfolds in weird methods, normally over one-sided cellphone calls, throughout which Zaki is tasked with relaying data to the viewers whereas reacting to it within the second. However whereas doing this as soon as is a neat trick, and twice is pushing it, “Flight 404” retains returning to the identical shallow properly of conveying its main turns and plot beats off-screen.

Zaki is outstanding at what she does, performing the herculean activity of imbuing Ghada with sense of lived actuality and religious dilemma. She wraps all of this in a rankled, risible character who feels the world is in opposition to her, regardless that the movie’s aesthetic choices — or lack thereof — appear intent on undercutting her efficiency at each flip.

The who’s-who of “Flight 404” is particularly irksome to maintain monitor of, given the film’s refusal to maneuver past its noncommittal cleaning soap opera trappings, the place dialogue takes priority, and rationalization (relatively than rumination) is prioritized inside that dialogue. It’s overlit to the purpose of plainness, robbing its few genuinely dramatic reveals of a lot impression. As an alternative, the onus for constructing intrigue falls on disastrously conceived sequences of characters shouting plot reveals about their pasts at each other with machine-gun pacing, guaranteeing that key components of the film’s premise are disguised for almost all of its runtime, earlier than being clunkily uncovered and by no means talked about once more.

In concept, the story of a flawed dynamic girl denied the very human idea of change and metamorphosis is potent dramatic fodder, and Zaki’s strategy yields outstanding moments in isolation. Nevertheless, when seen in sequence, little of “Flight 404” lives as much as this concept.