A rich movie about a poor girl getting cake ingredients.
“The President’s Cake” is an Iraqi film that won the Directors’ Fortnight’s Audience Award and the Camera d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Written and directed by Hasan Hadi (whose background includes short films like “Swimsuit” and “Eden”), the film takes a simple idea and uses it to represent a time and place. The premise regards a girl baking a cake for the country’s president, but it’s not as cute and innocent as it sounds.
The story is set in Iraq, circa 1990s, under President Saddam Hussein, who was not as fun as Trey Parker and Matt Stone made him out to be on “South Park.” And we meet 9-year-old Lamia (Baneen Ahmad Nayyef), who is poor but is ordered to make a birthday cake for Hussein. Groceries are expensive and scarce, and so she, her ill grandmother Bibi (Waheed Thabet Khreibat), and rooster Hindi all must travel to the city to fetch the ingredients. Looks like we have another young heroine with a rooster after Moana and HeiHei. However, Bibi is considering to forget about the cake and give her to a family who can take better care of her. You know how hard it is for kids to leave their families, and so Lamia runs away.
In the meantime, she embarks on a mission to get the ingredients (easy way to remember: “Flour for life,” “sugar sweetens our lives,” and “eggs for fertility”), along with her classmate and friend Saeed (Sajad Mohamad Qasem), who is assigned to get fruit. This was all debated in a classroom draw. And if they fail, they will be punished.
Saeed is often viewed as a jinx, especially since his father is a beggar. In fact, because these kids and the grandmother are poor, they’re practically treated like garbage by the rich people or the shopkeepers. The kids need ingredients, but they don’t have money and try to barter. And the grandmother goes to the police asking for help in finding her granddaughter, but they refuse to help, until one man comes in to her aid. It would take a miracle to find a saint in this city.
I try to be as kind as I can be to people, but if they’re going to be jerks, I feel sorry for them. And these jerks here can be overwhelming, but I guess that’s the reality of the city life, whether it takes place in America or Iraq. And I also suspect that the film likes to ignore those people and focus on the young main heroine and her cake mission, and wishes her luck in getting ingredients, even she has to beg, borrow, or steal.
“The President’s Cake” also has a subplot when Saeed loses the rooster, and Lamia chews him out, until he turns the tables on him. You hope these two will make up, but all we’re given at the end between them is silence. We’re not sure if they’re ready to forgive each other yet, and I guess that’s how life works sometimes. Even “Chasing Amy” had Ben Affleck and Jason Lee’s characters going their separate ways and acknowledging each other’s presence at the end.
We also have Chris Columbus, Eric Roth, and Marielle Heller among the film’s executive producers, but they aren’t really the reasons to see this movie. It’s because of how the film wants to show us how poor people can make a difference and try to take risks in order to get their tasks done. And these names-whom we’ve never heard of before-are played authentically and brilliantly. I think we have the right ingredients to make a delicious cake with plenty of filling.
One Week Engagement in NY and LA This Week
In Select Theaters February 6th
