There is a polished TV series quality to the film “Flight 404” by director Hany Khalifa, which earned Egypt an Oscar nomination. It never goes beyond these visual and narrative trappings, but its story of a woman escaping her past, on her way to the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, is driven by a layered performance from Mona Zaki. While the actress brings nuance and chilling emotional commitment to her role, the film is often so frustratingly tied up in ambiguous drama that it veers into comedic territory.
Hardworking Ghada (Zaki) works for an upscale real estate company in Cairo, and is keen to take her breaks. Dawnor daily Islamic prayer, which does not seem to be a priority for most people around her. However, “Flight 404” is far from the conservative slogan such a background might suggest. The story begins when Ghada’s noon prayer is interrupted by a phone call, detailing her estranged mother blackmailing a young relative for money, a wonderfully symbolic event of the past that interferes with her present piety—a continuing theme.
The film slowly reveals that Ghada was once a high-end escort, though the film dances around this verbiage. This is perhaps to circumvent Egyptian cinema’s censorship standards, which lends credence to Khalifa’s initially ambiguous approach to details and relationships, as Ghada prepares to begin her pilgrimage to Mecca. However, it’s not long before every aspect of the film becomes scattered and unclear. Ghada’s mother comes to her workplace to shake her, and she is hit by a car and subsequently hospitalized, although she is rarely mentioned again.
This hospitalization certainly seems to lead to a domino effect. The cost drives Ghada to seek out old connections from her past life, from madams to colleagues who were once regulars, in order to facilitate land deals, fulfill old favors, pay her threesome in Mecca, or…well, the list is long. The revolving door of supporting characters hints at Ghada’s past through expository flashbacks, but rarely do these scenes shed light on the present, on what she’s actually trying to achieve (logistically or emotionally) or how returning to her past changes or challenges her beyond superficial notions.
The film’s lead role involves an anonymous would-be client who spots Ghada at one of her old residences and requests her services, even though she has left her old career behind in favor of a hijab and a more straightforward religious path. The question of whether or not she will return to her old self goes hand-in-hand with the degree to which the men (and sometimes women) around her will allow her to live life on her new terms, suggesting a social fabric that keeps her emotionally trapped. Moreover, the film’s frank and casual portrayal of her former friends and colleagues ensures that Ghada never becomes an agent of reactionary anti-sex work views, as her choices are framed as her own, hers alone—and one of many possible choices. However, what Ghada actually represents is often ambiguous as well.
The symbolism associated with her prayers comes up from time to time, as when she washes her feet (a common purification before prayer) in the luxurious modern bathroom sink of a former classmate, whose expensive home was not equipped for such a ritual. No one else around her seems to particularly care about the traditions she now clings to as a way of leaving her past behind. However, despite the understatement of some of these nods to the subject, the actual drama of the film unfolds in strange ways, usually via one-sided phone calls, in which Zaki is tasked with relaying information to the audience while responding to it in that moment. But while it’s a nice trick to do it once and then do it twice, “Flight 404” keeps returning to the same shallow well of moving key turns and plot beats off-screen.
Zaki is great at what she does, performing the difficult task of instilling Ghada’s sense of lived reality and spiritual dilemma. She wraps all of this in an angry, funny character who feels like the world is against her, though the film’s aesthetic decisions — or lack thereof — seem intent on undermining her performance at every turn.
The character tracking of “Flight 404” is particularly troubling, given the film’s refusal to move beyond the trappings of noncommittal soap opera, dialogue takes precedence, and interpretation (rather than rumination) is prioritized in this dialogue. It’s over-lit to the point of obviousness, depriving the few dramatic reveals of much impact. Instead, the burden of building the plot falls on catastrophic sequences of characters screaming and revealing their pasts to each other with machine-gun speed, ensuring that key elements of the film’s premise are hidden throughout most of its runtime, before being extraordinarily revealed. It was not mentioned again.
In theory, the story of a dynamic, flawed woman who denies the human concept of change and transformation is powerful dramatic material, and Zaki’s approach results in wonderful moments in isolation. However, when viewed sequentially, little of “Flight 404” lives up to this idea.