NZIFF Review: The President's Cake
With the premise of a poor girl being randomly selected to go on a journey to gather ingredients to make a cake for Saddam Hussein's birthday, I was expecting a cross between The Hunger Games and Dora the Explorer.
With no trailer, and only the premise of a poor girl being randomly selected to make a cake for Saddam Hussein's birthday, and going on a journey to gather ingredients so that she and her grandmother can avoid certain death, I was expecting a sort of cross between The Hunger Games and Dora the Explorer. Perhaps a dark comedy that would address the absurdity of expecting a little girl to make a cake worthy of a dictator, when a single apple is such a luxury.
Instead, the movie isn't really about the cake at all, but about how all-consuming Saddam Hussein's regime is, and how it especially negatively impacts Lamia, our protagonist, as a poor young orphan being raised by her diabetic grandmother in rural 1990s Iraq, and how she remains resilient through it all. The five eggs she needs for her cake cost 2500 dinar, no one has seems to have sugar, or at least, not legally, and crowds of people are shown clamouring outside of a ration office for a small bag of flour. This struggle for ingredients happens against the backdrop of the celebration of Saddam Hussein, with his picture being in every other shot, his name being shouted in praise, and his birthday being treated like a national holiday. There is also the constant presence of military activity, with military planes flying over, soldiers manning the checkpoint to enter the city, and soldiers injured from US attacks laying in the hospital beds. The cruelty of the regime makes itself evident from beginning to end, where almost any act of kindness is tainted by another person's selfishness.
As a result, the movie takes on a sombre tone, though it has its funny moments, courtesy of Lamia's rooster Hindi, and some tender moments as she goes about her journey. You find yourself feeling for Lamia, admiring her resilience at such a young age, and then feeling frustrated that she has to be that resilient in the first place. For a debut film, Hasan Hadi has done well, by making a solid social commentary by capturing the small details of life under Saddam Hussein's regime, while also drawing attention to events unfolding on a larger scale.
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
