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KEEPINGTHEFAITH
THE INFIDEL: A NOVEL TWIST ON ‘BODY SWAP’ COMEDY
FEATURE IN FOCUS
or a film that hinges on the Fstorytelling device of subverted
expectations The Infidel owes its inception to a similar scenario. Producer Arvind
Ethan David, CEO of Slingshot Films, reveals that the project was conceived in a breakfast meeting with writer and actress Morwenna Banks.
“It was gatecrashed by her boyfriend David Baddiel,” he explains during a break in filming near its Essex location. “Morwenna told him he was supposed to be babysitting but he said to me, ‘what if Omid Djalili was a Muslim who discovered he was a Jew,’. I just thought, ‘yes, we can do that’.”
Already a successful comedy performer, novelist and sometime songwriter Baddiel always felt that this idea had more mileage as a movie than a story for television, and above all felt that it would be possible to give this high concept idea a novel twist.
“I was confident about being able to write it, “ he nods, “but the idea is really no different from any other body swap film.
“I enjoy movies like Trading Places a lot, which are normally good for broad comedy.
“Of course, here we’re taking quite a tricky cultural and race issue, using a body swap vehicle to try to make it funny and edgy. It really touches on stuff that people are worried about, which is good so long as there isn’t a fatwa. Which I’m hoping there won’t be.”
Putting this material in the hands of colleagues capable of translating the idea sensitively to the screen, producer and writer called upon the talents of director Josh Appignanesi and cinematographer Natasha Braier – whose recent short The Milk Of Sorrow has picked up an Oscar nomination – to help realise it.
“Natasha is brilliant,” Baddiel enthuses. “Josh insisted on using her and she’s here because of him, though she loved the script too. It’s really interesting. He’s art house,
she’s art house and I’m obviously comedy. Hopefully something good will come out it.”
With Omid Djalili playing the culturally confused Mahmud, the rest of the cast includes Archie Panjabi as his long suffering wife, Richard Schiff as his Jewish mentor and Igal Naor (in real life an Israeli of Iraqi heritage) as his nemesis.
“We’re not pushing any particular ideology,” Djalili explains. “It’s just a very human and entertaining film. It dramatises the similarities rather than focussing on the differences between people. What we’re trying to do with it is make an art house indie comedy with a mainstream broad appeal, and one that won’t look like a British comedy.”
One of the keys to this ambition, as Baddiel has suggested, is not to rely on heads of department who have experienced only a world of British sitcom.
“A lot of British comedies are really good,” the writer notes, “but they’re shot in a rather pedestrian way. I didn’t want this to be like that. There are lots of scenes that are rather like art house movies, and a little bit like early Woody Allen movies as well. A lot is played in wide shots, we tried to avoid the obvious cut-and-close-up for the punchline, except where absolutely necessary.”
“That was another reason I took this film,” says Braier. “Josh wanted
to try to do something specific with the camera and not just do shot/ reverse shot. So I tried to achieve most scenes in one shot, and that was quite a big challenge. That was what interested me most about the film in a way, because lighting-wise it was quite straightforward.”
Above all, the humour is drawn out of subtle details in character, as the Tottenham Hotspur supporting Mahmud we meet at the start of the story learns that his Muslim heritage is not quite what he had thought it was.
“Everyone knows about Jewish humour,” says Arvind Ethan David, “but Muslims are funny too. Our film aimstoshowthat.” ANWARBRETT
The Infidel was originated on 16mm ETERNA 250T, 8653 and Fujicolor REALA 500D 8692
THE DP VIEW
NATASHA BRAIER
We faced a few challenges on
The Infidel, such as establishing “a colour palette between Mahmud’s two worlds. There’s a scene in the film where these worlds meet, when he’s at a Muslim rally and is seen wearing a yarmulka.
We were supposed to shoot that in East London, but we settled on another location – Somerset House. That was perfect because we were trying to cover most of the landscape with our 80 extras, shooting fairly long lenses so that you wouldn’t recognise it.
The architecture in the background was consistent with the kind of London street where you would have embassies, so it would make sense for us to be there. But the best thing about it was the backgrounds were very similar.
We had two identical walls opposite each other, so we could shoot during the whole day and change our background in order to chase the sun. In the end it proved incredibly practical.
FUJIFILM MOTION PICTURE • THE MAGAZINE • EXPOSURE • 35
Photo main: Omid Djalili with screen family in The Infidel; above: scenes from the movie
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