Tamer Ruggli: Tortured familial relationships inspire Back to Alexandria

Emotional and hallucinatory feature of love and loss, starring Nadine Labaki, is screening at Amman International Film Festival

Oscar-nominated Nadine Labaki brings spontaneity and freedom to the lead role, Ruggli says. Photo: Orange Studio

Love and cruelty are the primary propellants of Back to Alexandria, and for the film’s director, Tamer Ruggli, this volatile mixture was inspired by the relationships he witnessed as a child between the women on the Egyptian side of his family.

“I always felt there was always so much love in those relationships, but also so much hate, in a way,” Ruggli says at the Amman International Film Festival, where the film is showing. “They couldn’t tell each other that they loved each other. All the relationships were a little bit tortured, a little bit complicated.

“But there was still so much heart. So much more than what I was used to with my family in Switzerland.”

Back to Alexandria revolves around Sue, a psychotherapist who travels back to Egypt from Switzerland after hearing that her estranged mother has suffered a stroke. From the beginning of this journey, the film enters a fantastical realm – a sort of fever dream that pushes the plot forward using hallucinatory interactions between Sue (Nadine Labaki) and her mother Fairouz (Fanny Ardant). The narrative device is appropriate, especially considering the particular type of grief the film aims to explore.

“The whole story appeared when my grandmother died in Egypt,” Ruggli says. “I had a great relationship with my grandmother. When she died, there was a lot of unfinished business and my mother had trouble dealing with this kind of grief.”

Sue first travels to Cairo to meet her aunt, before embarking on a road trip to Alexandria, where her ailing mother resides. Back to Alexandria has several motifs that make the subgenre a popular one. Sue preserves through landscapes that seem reflective of her state of mind – going from the turbulence of Cairo’s traffic to the introspective deserts en route to Alexandria, before finally reaching the relative serenity of the coastal city.

Unexpected personalities pop up along the way that have the protagonist confront unresolved issues. And, of course, the journey is made in a vehicle that’s full of personality – in this case, a pink 1950s DeSoto convertible.

Back to Alexandria is not your typical road trip film, however, where ahead lies an uncertain, possibly inspiring, future – and in the rearview lay the throes of the past. Here, Sue is driving to confront her past, while simultaneously being hounded by it. She hallucinates conversations with her mother, consoles her younger self and sits at dinner tables with deceased aunts and female relatives she describes as “scorpions".

She has revelations about her mother’s antagonistic nature, and comes to learn about a love affair she had with a European captain before being forced to marry Sue’s father. This failed romance, and having to live in the debris of her dreams, has had a pivotal impact on her mother’s attitude towards Sue, who she perceives as the child born from an imprisoning relationship.

Again, Ruggli notes that many of the film’s characters have direct counterparts in his own life.

“As a child, you see things that you aren't supposed to see or hear,” he says. “You take them in and kind of create your own story. I saw a lot of things. I saw my grandmother's lover, for instance, when I was a teenager, when I went to the toilet at 3am. I didn’t know who this man was so I kind of had to puzzle it together.

“I thought it would be interesting for Sue's character if she rediscovers her mother at the same time as we do, because in the beginning, she's this very cold-hearted and mean person, but by the end, you see that she suffered a lot in her life. And she kind of transported that into her daughter.”

While Ruggli had a particular idea of what Sue was like, he credits Labaki for elevating the character to new heights. He hints that, as a debut feature director, he was initially nervous about the Oscar-nominated filmmaker taking up the part of Sue, but says ultimately her participation was “a gift".

“She's a very spontaneous person,” Ruggli says. “She’s like a free electron and brings a lot of spontaneous things to the character. I loved working with her.”

While Sue’s trajectory as a character is arresting in its own right, Back to Alexandria excels at offering a glimpse of the ageing Egyptian Francophone society, as well as the classist perspectives that dominated the time.

On an aesthetic level, too, the film – though set in modern times – is replete with nostalgic elements that beckon the 20th century, from the old hotels and mansions to the vintage clothes that Sue, her mother and her aunts wear. The scenes come as a vibrant contrast to the first few minutes of the film, which are set in Switzerland, which is “very cold, very designed, very nice but empty".

In some way, Ruggli says he was trying to recreate the Egypt he was familiar with as a child, and the atmosphere that reminded him of his grandmother.

Yet, as much as the heart and soul of the story bloom from Ruggli’s personal memories, he stresses that it was with the help of his co-writers that he managed to bring the story to its final, polished form. Colombine scriptwriter Marianne Brun helped hone the feminine point of view, he says. The film’s other scriptwriter, meanwhile, was the famed Egyptian filmmaker Yousry Nasrallah.

“I had the chance to work with Yousry Nasrallah at a later stage,” Ruggli says. “He really brought life to the dialogue and the characters. It was also important for me to have his approval because he knows the kind of people who are from this old aristocracy.”

Amman International Film Festival runs until Thursday