Ola is sailing alone after she starts to find herself again (Netflix)
The “Netflix” platform is trying to build a new bridge to communicate with the Arab audience, in the second Egyptian series it produces, by relying on the popularity of the character “Ola Abdel Sabour” presented by it. Actress Hend Sabry In the series “I Want to Get Married” 12 years ago, so that the series “Search for Ola” is the most Arab production that is close to the Arab audience and most in contact with it.
Followers received work differently from the rest of the Arab series and films produced by the platform, which were met with a scathing attack and calls to prevent their presentation, as happened in the movie “Friends… not dearest”Was Wunsley “Jin”Al Rawabi Girls School. It is not about the content of the work, because “Netflix” She did not produce a calm series that corresponds to the prevailing social ideas that are reflected in most locally produced dramas, but rather relates to the history of the character “Ola Abdel-Sabour”, which the audience feels belongs to and owns their cultural environment, even after alienating her from him.
Despite this, and as is the norm in all Arab dramas produced by “Netflix”, reactions about the series were divided between male comments criticizing the series as destroying the values of society and the family and encouraging women to divorce, and between those who defended the work as it provides important messages Supporting women’s empowerment.
For the old series, “I want to get married”, It is a comic work adapted from posts of the same title, by writer Ghada Abdel Aal. It tells the story of a pharmacist in her late twenties, who is exposed to a lot of social pressures because she was late in getting married, so she tries to find a groom in any way possible. The series ends, as most happy movies and series end, with the heroine’s marriage, as if the woman’s life ends with this event.
And if the French writer, Guy de Maupassant, had rebelled against this type of romantic novel that ends in marriage that puts an end to the lives of virtual female heroines; What happened in the series “Searching for Ola” appears to be somewhat similar, as the events of the series begin 13 years after the end of the last part, with the divorce of “Ola”, and the opening of the door to life for a character who is considered a stereotypical image of female characters who die dramatically when they marry.
Thus, the new series comes with a different and advanced thought, lightly carrying the seeds of change, while preserving the majority of the components of success included in “I Want to Get Married”; As the makers of the work maintain the “Ola” style in breaking the fourth wall, to address the audience directly, and to comment on the events you are experiencing in a sarcastic manner.
What seems impressive here is that Hend Sabry manages to maintain the rhythm of her personality, despite all the sudden changes in her thoughts, and despite all the changes that occurred in the work environment, and was affected by the absence of all male characters in the family, and her prominent details melted, after being withdrawn. The remaining personalities are from the popular environment in which they lived, and were placed in luxurious homes in which only the rich and singular classes in Egypt lived; Hind Sabri did not leave any dramatic factors that would help her reproduce her character in the same spirit, except for the presence of her mother’s character, Suhair (Sawsan Badr), who finds herself facing an easier task, as the character maintains the same retrograde sayings and ideas, and her speech does not change.
Through this story, and its dramatic references, “Searching for Ola” sheds light on the difficulties that divorced women go through in our societies, and on the contradictions between men’s and women’s lives after divorce, through the differences in society’s treatment of “Ola” and her ex-husband “Hisham” (Hani Adel); The society accepts that “Hisham” enters into a new emotional relationship with a girl who is many years younger than him, and “Ola” is forbidden to enter into any emotional relationship at the same time, so that society puts pressure on her, and limits her role to raising children only; Most of the influential personalities close to Ola ask her to be the ideal mother, who ends her life after divorce in order to raise her children, within a distinctive dramatic painting that shows the social complicity that gives a man freedom of choice and emancipation, and does not restrict him except by paying the expenses that ensure a decent life for his children and their nanny (i.e. his divorcee). This discussion extends even further, when you put the character of “Hisham” in a symmetrical panel with the character of “Ola”, who is being criticized and branded as mischievous after participating in a promotional campaign for medical products, to ask “Ola” about the meaning of the word traumatic. This speech, of course, is not similar to “Ola Abdel-Sabour” in the series “I Want to Get Married”, but Hind Sabry managed to adapt it in favor of her character, who became more beautiful and mature in the new series.
The old logic of the character “Ola Abdel-Sabour”, which controls some reactions, makes us believe for a moment that the end will be with the heroine’s marriage to a better man, or by returning to her first husband. However, the surprise takes place on the last lifeboat, when “Ola” sails alone, after she began to find herself again, on a journey we lived through six episodes, in which everyone thought that “Ola” was looking for another love that gives her life value, before we discover, With her, she was in fact searching for herself… for Ola.