‘Perfumed With Mint’: Venice Review

Dir/scr: Muhammed Hamdy. Egypt/France/Tunisia/Qatar. 2024. 113mins

Cairo-born Muhammed Hamdy’s debut feature confronts the ghosts of the past and the way they haunt and shape the present. Unfolding in a sepulchral gloom, his sombre ghost story develops into a powerful meditation on loss, guilt, paranoia and the haunting legacy of an oppressive regime. There are clear affinities with the work of Apichatpong Weerasethakul, and the relevance to so many areas of on-going global conflict and division should ensure further festival screenings following a world premiere in Venice Critics Week.

A thought-provoking reckoning with trauma 

Hamdy is best known as a cinematographer, winning an Emmy for his work on  the Oscar-nominated The Square (2013) which he also co-produced. He acts as his own cinematographer on Perfumed With Mint, setting a good deal of the the film in a dense gloom. We first encounter doctor Bahaa (Alaa El Din Hamada) as he meets a mother who can’t move on from the loss of her son. “My son refuses to die and my heart hurts,” she confides. She then tells the story of a son who left their home and never came back. After three years of searching, they found a body and it is four years since they buried him. Now, she has been told he may be alive, settinmg the themes that will run throughout the film of loss, absence and uncertainty.

Hiding in the dark shells of abandoned buildings in an unnamed deteriorating Egyptian city, Bahaa encounters a number of his friends and all of them seem to experience some physical expression or manifestation of trauma. Bahaa cherishes a letter from a lost love. Since the missive became wet it has never dried out. He hangs it over a bowl that keeps filling with liquid. The slow drip of water becomes part of the soundtrack of the film.

Bahaa’s friend Mahdy (Mahdy Abo Bahat) has little shoots of mint that sprout from his body when he is scared or anxious, but remain dormant when he is stoned. The quest for hashish and the promise of the sweet oblivion it might bring is also a recurring element. Another friend, Abdo (Eldin) reveals a body pockmarked with bullet holes and claims: “171 bullets emptied my lungs of air and I bled under a tree.”

We assume that all of these characters are dead or at least shadows of the people they once were, now forever marked by trauma. The film itself is peppered with stories and memories of the dead and disappeared. It is a country where everything has changed, and everyone wonders what they could have done differently. Bahaa ponders what his girlfriend might think if she miraculously returned and found that he had coped by running away and getting stoned with his friends.

There is a slight element of a post-war thriller to proceedings as Bahaa and Mahdy flee through the streets seeking sanctuary in derelict buildings. There is an echo of Odd Man Out (1946) in their flight and The Third Man (1949) in the giant shadows cast on city walls in the manner of Harry Lime. Mostly, however, Perfumed With Mint is a film of contemplation. The chain-smoking Bahaa is often seeing staring into space, reflecting on what has happened and the impact events have had on him. The camera remains static as characters unburden their fears and tragedies in lengthy monologues.

The end result is often challenging viewing but builds into a thought-provoking reckoning with trauma and the scars it leaves on a nation.