Karis Bashar plays a singer in a night club (Cedars Art Production)
Rami Hanna returns to directing in the series “With Five Souls”, a joint dramatic work produced by “Cedars Art Production”, which falls within the wave of works that re-approach the Lebanese-Syrian relationship within the framework of the popular neighborhood.
The series relies on a familiar theme in the drama shared in recent years, where stories of identity, displacement, and belonging intersect with a family tale based on an old secret and a pending inheritance. Events begin with the announcement of the death of businessman Amir Badis (Rafiq Ali Ahmed), only for Shams (Qusay Khouli) to discover that he is his father, and that obtaining his share of the inheritance is conditional on finding four brothers whom he does not know.
This journey intersects with the story of Samaher (Caris Bashar), a singer who is experiencing a personal and family conflict in the same neighborhood, forming a story that combines family romance and class conflict within a traditional template similar to Indian drama stories. It seems that the production company has once again fallen into the trap of repeating topics we see on screen every Ramadan.
This season, Karis Bashar is embarking on a new experience within the framework of joint drama, after a remarkable presence two years ago in “Fire with Fire” (written by Rami Koussa, directed by Mohamed Abdel Aziz), when she was able to establish a complex character within a charged social context.
In “With Five Lives”, she plays the role of Samaher, a singer who is experiencing an intertwined conflict: she is trying to prove the paternity of her child in the face of the child’s father (Fadi Abi Samra), who refuses to acknowledge him, after they gave birth to him outside of marriage, in addition to her suffering with an alcoholic father (Tayseer Idris), and the development of her relationship with Shams in parallel with the shift in his potential social position as a result of the inheritance issue.
The role gives Bashar a clear emotional space, and the song clips she performed became widespread on social networking sites and achieved high listening rates, prompting some followers to wonder about the possibility of releasing them as an independent musical work. However, the choice of the Iraqi Bedouin dialect often seemed to be a burden on her performance, as the tone did not settle on a single rhythm, which created a gap between performance and complete immersion in the character.
The series’ events escalate after the sixth episode, with Shams returning to the path of searching for his share of his father’s inheritance, in parallel with his relationship with Samaher. However, the dramatic structure does not stray far from familiar paths, as Qusay Khouli appears in a number of scenes recalling performance tools that he had previously presented in previous works.
There is also a visual paradox in drawing the characters; Shams, who works in collecting and selling waste, appears with an elegant look and carefully combed hair that is completely inconsistent with his supposed reality, while Samaher works as a singer in a nightclub and lives in a modest house, without this contrast being invested sufficiently dramatically. This defect in realistic consistency made the story, from the first episodes, revolve around a cycle of searching for sufficient narrative justification to extend it to thirty episodes.
On the other hand, the story is not devoid of elements that have previously been present in joint works shown in recent years, as the theme of family secret, inheritance, and impossible relationship is repeated within a template that extends in time longer than it can bear. A number of faces who participated with Khouli in previous series are also present, with similar personalities, which enhances the sense of similarity between the works.
At the level of form, it seems clear that filming locations were used previously, from the influential family palace that appeared in “Five and a Half” (directed by Philip Asmar) to the popular neighborhood that formed a main space in “Twenty Twenty” (directed by Philip Asmar), which gives the work a familiar production character rather than a new visual space.