Feathers, from director Omar El Zohairy and his co-writer Ahmed Amer, won the top prize at Cannes Critics’ Week. It’s a dark comedy that follows a woman’s journey to support her family after her husband’s disappearance and replacement with a chicken. It was selected as part of the 5th edition of the Pingyao International Film Festival as part of their Crouching Tigers category for new international directors.
Feathers begins with darkness and arresting sound of screams, followed by the image of a man on fire. We then meet our protagonist, an unnamed Egyptian wife (played by Demyana Nassar), as she goes about her monotonous routine of cleaning and feeding her family in her rundown apartment. A lot is shown via production design and wardrobe in this establishing sequence, from rot on the walls of the washing room, to threadbare clothing. You also get the controlling hand of the husband (played by Samy Bassouny), who doles out money from his lockbox and makes demands on his wife while not paying the rent, talking about a previous job he had, and making grand promises of buying a house with a pool for the kids someday.
The film’s first act finds the couple preparing for the birthday party of one of their sons. The husband shows up with a plug-in fountain, something he believes makes them look successful. This is an expense we are aware they can’t afford due to the discussion of the past due rent, but much of the party seems to be a show for his boss, in an attempt to garner money/favour. Or at least that’s the initial impression, and the one the wife maybe was given, but then the magicians come into play. The magicians insist on using the husband for their big trick. The husband enters a box, and they turn him into a chicken, to everyone’s delight. However, when they put the chicken back in the box, they pull the chicken out again. Something went wrong. A very inciting incident that is something to cluck about (I will avoid chicken jokes going forwards).
Now whether you believe the husband has been turned into a chicken or used this as a rouse to escape his life/debt with the wad of money he just got from his boss is left up for interpretation for the majority of the film (and I won’t spoil the answer for you). I will, however, layout out some of the clever evidence they laid to play both sides. In the column for him being a chicken you have: the belief by the adults that he’s the chicken and his lockbox being left behind with cash inside. On the side of rouse, you have: the magicians (and filmmakers) making sure not to show the inside of the box, and the husband’s prized fountain being gone when they return to the living room but not the TV. Also, if the husband was trying to make everyone believe he turned into a chicken, leaving the lockbox would help with that story.
Either way, the result is the same. The woman ends up husbandless with multiple months of back rent due, young children to care for with no source of income, turned away from the police due to the unbelievable nature of her situation, and with a chicken to care for. She struggles, trying to find a way to turn her husband back into a man and find a way to pay their debts. She tries to get money from his employers, even tries to work for them, but she’s unable to because they won’t hire a woman. They will, however, hire her young son, who can’t be more than ten. The night before she sends her son off to work, she uses what little money she still has in cash to buy a treat of cake, paralleling the birthday party in which a happy memory with cake proceeded a loss of childhood.
Nassar carries the film, infusing her performance with a quiet stoicism of a woman that has been built to trudge on no matter what gets tossed her way. To make do, to sacrifice, to repress. That’s not to say she doesn’t get moments of triumph.
Spoilers Ahead
The husband returns just as she’s starting to get the family onto a semblance of a track (not ideal with the son working but something). His return adds emotional and financial strain to her life. It was weird to root for someone to do away with chicken husband, but I was rooting for it nevertheless so that she could be free of him and have a chance at becoming a bird in flight instead of a constantly plucked chicken.
© 2021. UniversalCinema Mag.