It was set to open the first day of the Alexandria Film Festival in September. Instead Nabil Ayouch’s Whatever Lola Wants was pushed to the Festival’s out-of-competition panorama section — at the very end on the very last day. The decision came just 48 hours before the festival’s opening night when President of Association of Film Writers and Critics, and organizer of the festival, Mamdouh El Laithy announced that Ayouch’s movie would be replaced by director Khaled El Haggar’s movie Stolen Kisses.

El Laithy’s rationale was that Whatever Lola Wants tarnishes Egypt’s image; he also alleged that Ayouch had filmed in Egypt illegally and accepted funding from the United States.

It is also worth noting that El Laithy is the producer of Stolen Kisses. (For more details on the cinematic controversy, see Culture 101, starting on page 70.)

In 2007, Whatever Lola Wants held less controversial screenings at the Marrakech and Dubai international film festivals to a mixed reception. After the Dubai screening, Egyptian actor Mahmoud Yassin was so upset that he asked Ayouch not to make movies about Egypt again.

The movie, a contemporary take on the Cinderella fairytale, is a gateway from East to West through dance and music. The film’s title is inspired by the popular jazz song performed by several artists including Sarah Vaughan; Ayouch selected Egyptian-Belgian singer Natacha Atlas to perform its latest version in the Arab Western fusion she is famous for.

Whatever Lola Wants depicts the journey of Lola (Laura Ramsey), a young and beautiful American who is temporarily working as a postwoman while taking dancing lessons in New York. One day, she is introduced to Zack (Assaad Bouab), a handsome Egyptian who is in the United States to finish his education. They immediately fall in love, but Lola one day wakes up to discover that her Prince Charming has completely vanished. She ends up traveling all the way to Cairo to look for him, only to discover belly dancing through the once famous Ismahan (Carmen Lebbos).

Writer-director Nabil Ayouch sat down with Egypt Today and, with a slight French accent and quiet voice, discussed the memories that served as a source of inspiration for his film. Edited excerpts:

No. I began with French theater where I tried for three years to become an actor in Paris, but I discovered that it wasn’t my real thing. At the same time, I was writing my own texts including some theatrical pieces for which I started to develop a personal interest to direct.

From theater, I moved to filmmaking, and I wrote and directed three consecutive short films. The best one of them was Les pierres bleues du desert (The Blue Stones of the Desert, 1992) that starred Jamel Debbouze, who was a young unknown at that time (He went to become a TV and cinema superstar, winning the 2006 César Award for his role in Indigènes). It was about a boy living in a small village, who was dreaming of blue stones that nobody believed existed. But he decides to leave the village to realize his dreams until, at the end, he finally finds the stones.

The movie served as a journey of finding my inner self. All my life was about where I came from and to where I should go. I was born in Paris to a French mother and to a Moroccan father, and I lived between France and Morocco until I settled down with my mother and grandparents in the French city of Sarcelles.

Although France gave me education, culture and values, my roots go back to Morocco. The gap between Morocco and France is not only about a few hours of flying; these are two continents, Orient and Occident, with geopolitical turmoil that haunted me when I was younger and looking for myself and for my identity.

Theater and most of all filmmaking helped me to go further in a quest for more discoveries and to overcome this weakness that I transformed into some kind of strength.

I toured film festivals around the world with Les pierres bleues du desert, which was consequently acquired by several European television channels. This success encouraged me to switch to feature films with Mektoub (Written, 1997) that was shown at the Cairo Film Festival and Ali Zaoua, prince de la rue (Ali Zaoua: Prince of the Streets, 2000) that was shown at the Alexandria Film Festival.

I like to tell stories, or more likely fairytales, because I like to make films that have happy endings. All of my characters were looking for themselves; they have dreams, quests and they embark on voyages of self-discovery (parcours initiatique).

I admired films by Charlie Chaplin, Terrence Malick and Emir Kusturica, but I tried not to let my films get influenced by other filmmakers’ style, because I don’t like it if someone watching a film comes and says: “Well this scene is influenced by, or a tribute to a certain famous filmmaker.” I think that the real creators are capable of inventing something different and new at all times.

The origin of Whatever Lola Wants goes back to while I was shooting Ali Zaoau in 1999. There was an old woman, playing the role of a witch called Aicha Kandicha whose horrible feet were the only part of her visible on the screen. Between takes, this woman often chatted with my co-writer Nathalie Saugeon, and during one of these times, she told Saugeon her personal story about how she was a beautiful Moroccan belly dancer who used to perform in famous cabarets. One day, her husband caught her in bed with one of her numerous lovers. Panicked by his rage, she jumped from the hotel’s window and broke her feet. This ended her career but didn’t take her life, and she continued to tragically live on the streets.

After we wrapped the film, I completely forgot about her but her story kept haunting Saugeon for three years until we decided to create a new film, based on her story. As I also mentioned, because I have been in Egypt several times, I took the opportunity to meet Oriental dancers, talked to them to learn about similar scandals that took place in the Middle East. This is when the script for Whatever Lola Wants started to come together.

We held casting sessions in 10 different countries including Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, England and America, which allowed us to gather a cast of veteran Arab actors such as Jordanian Nadim Sawalha, who plays Ismahan’s blind doorman and Moroccan actor Ahmed Boulane, who plays a rich businessman.

While visiting Cairo, a Palestinian actress who noticed that I wasn’t happy with her audition readings recommended Carmen Lebbos whom I remembered from the acclaimed film West Beirut (1988). Following that, the Egyptian co-producer of Aflam Misr El-Alamia (Misr International Films — Youssef Chahine’s company), Gaby Khoury and his Egyptian production manager Ahmed Kassem put me in contact with Hend Sabry and the legendary Maryam Fakhr El-Deen who both made surprise cameo appearances in the film.

Laura didn’t know anything about dancing, whether Oriental or non-Oriental. After meeting dozens of other girls for several months, Laura was cast in the second series of trials. After a dancing teacher noticed her dancing, she s “That girl has it!” Because I didn’t want her to take lessons in Los Angeles, we convinced her agent to let her travel to Morocco and Egypt for six months to learn the craft. In Cairo, she was trained by retired Egyptian bellydancer Aida Noor who taught her the rhythm, the movements and the technique. Laura was perfect because she let herself go, body and soul.

In the beginning, I wanted to shoot the whole Egyptian segment in Cairo, but I faced two problems. The first, it was too complicated with the Egyptian administration, which was too bureaucratic to issue permits or to finalize paper work. The situation is completely the opposite in Morocco, where shooting French or American films is much too flexible nowadays.

The second problem was the censorship; while other non-Egyptian directors used to submit fake scripts to the censors’ only to get their approval, and then go and shoot other scenes. I didn’t want to cheat the local censors. I believed that I wasn’t giving a bad image of Egypt because I simply love it. And when you love a country and its people, it allows you to criticize its mishaps.

But the Egyptian censors were sensitive about certain scenes and characters; for example, Lola’s best friend, who is an Egyptian homosexual living in New York. Another scene featured an Egyptian teen flirting with Lola on the streets.

It was obvious these scenes among others that couldn’t be shot in Egypt and since we wouldn’t change the script, we shot most of the Egyptian scenes in Morocco. We then came back to Cairo where we shot for seven days Downtown and in Maadi. And here, I should give credit to my Egyptian assistant director Nadine Khan (daughter of renowned filmmaker Mohamed Khan) who was a precious find, who helped us wrap up the dailies.

Nonetheless, I must say that censorship isn’t that strict in Egypt because the Cairo Film Festival was the sole Arab Festival that showed the uncut version of my film Lahzet Zalam (A Moment of Darkness, 2003), while it was censored in Marrakech Festival.

Despite some negative criticism from Arab journalists and actors, a lot of viewers, Arabs and non-Arabs came up to me saying that it was high time that the flaws of Arab men’s characters be reflected on the screen as well as the view coming from conservative people towards dancers and actresses in our Arab world.

But I was surprised when some Egyptians said that they didn’t like the way Egypt was portrayed in the film. Also, after we did a screening test in Los Angeles, most of the American viewers said that Lola made them want to go to the Arab world and visit Egypt. They said that the film gave them a completely different image from what the American media gives them: We, Arab people are complex not simple as we are described by the Western world. When Lola goes back to New York, she doesn’t go back with her newly acquired dancing skills, but with the Arab heritage as well.

Zack left Lola because, according to the traditions he grew up with, she wouldn’t be the perfect future wife in the eyes of his family. The situation is similar in Morocco too, where young men go to study in Europe or America and become open-minded. But when they come back to their homeland, they still follow the old traditions. We all suffer from this schizophrenia in our Arab society. History tells us that modernity is about giving and receiving. There was a time when the Islamic World generously contributed to the outside world. But when it closed in on itself, it stopped also receiving. That’s why I think we must introduce our culture to the Western world.  et