QUICK’N DIRTY: LIVE FROM THE RED SEA

Like Mr. Jones in Bob Dylan’s 1965 song Ballad of a Thin Man, something is happening at the beginning of Jordanese director Aysha Shahaltough’s short film Cleanse the Streets, but we just don’t know what.

The atmospheric and suspenseful story begins with two sisters travelling along a deserted road at night in a blue pickup truck. Batool (Salsabiela) is behind the wheel, and Rahaf (Laila Hzaineh) is in the passenger seat. They are running for their lives, terrified of what will happen if their father catches up with them. Amid the darkness, they stumble across Sari (Is’haq Elias), who could be a friend or foe. As the night unfolds, there’s the incident the sisters can try to outrun, then there’s that which clings to them like a shadow.

Cleanse the Streets starts off effectively building suspense and taking us inside Batool and Rahaf’s panic as they enter a damage control-like mode. It’s clearly Shahaltough’s intention to paint a portrait of the reality for marginalised women in a patriarchal led society. The director captivates by adding humour and absurdity to the suspense when the sisters come across Sari. They are right to be suspicious, but Shahaltough uses the introduction of this stranger to add to the suspense in a way that’s playful. It doesn’t disavow the seriousness of their situation, rather it teases the use of black comedy to complement its serious side. Whether it’s Elias’ manipulation of an almost still facial expression to provoke apprehension, Shahaltough choosing an actor with one of those faces, or just the inherent suspicion towards men, the audience’s own paranoia is sparked. Throughout, Shahaltough doesn’t allow her audience to sit back as passive observers. Instead, she draws them into the drama.

In the tight 17-minute run time, Shahaltough introduces, teases and reveals her characters. Setting it at night is a particularly effective choice because it emphasises Batool and Rahaf’s claustrophobic experience living in this society, regardless of time of day.

The story is playing around with the idea of whether one can go home again in interestingly playful ways. It’s not a question with an easy answer, and Shahaltough looks to how sometimes two opposing things can be true. Cleanse the Streets can be viewed as a cynical film with little hope, where life is like quicksand and the more we struggle the faster we sink. What Shahaltough captures is a snapshot of courage and adversity, but more than that she portrays the way the survival instinct compels us to fight, even as the darkness grows blacker.

Cleanse the Streets’ shortcoming is that while it knows where it is heading and the point that it is ultimately trying to make, there’s an awkward transition between scenes that undermines its conclusion. That’s not to suggest the reveal of what clings to them like a shadow or the film’s resolution doesn’t work, but it feels that the story needs longer to breathe, and to sit with its characters in their predicament. In its current form, it is a solid short film, but Shahaltough finds herself in the unenviable position of reaching for the end rather than letting it emerge organically. And yet, when we reflect on the fate of these characters, it’s enough to turn one’s stomach with a feeling of despair.

Cleanse the Streets showed in the 5th Red Sea International Film Festival.