CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - Yasmeen, complaining of stomach pains, sits quietly in a corner while the other guests blow out the candles at her cousin's birthday bash. That night, after the guests are gone, the 16-year-old goes into labor alone on the bathroom floor.
This scenario of unwed motherhood in a pious Muslim family is provocative stuff, and has won ``Girls' Secrets'' plaudits as a milestone in Egyptian cinema.
The film graphically portrays an urban society struggling to balance tradition and modernity, religion and science.
``The greatest value of the film lies in its reflection of the dilemma of Egypt's middle class. It's a major event in the Egyptian film industry,'' Samir Farid, one of Egypt's leading film critics, said in his review.
``Girls' Secrets'' touches on questions that trouble many Egyptians - indeed many Muslims everywhere: Should women abide by Islam's dress code and cover themselves up? How can parents screen out unwanted influences from the Internet and satellite television? Should schools teach sex education? Should teen-age boys and girls socialize? Has the struggle to earn a living left little time or energy for romance or family?
Here and there, the mournful voice of 1950s romantic singer and film star Mohammed Fawzi - Yasmeen's favorite - accentuates the girl's alienation from friends who prefer loud contemporary pop.
The film also portrays a male-dominated Egypt where a strict and sometimes sinister interpretation of Islam relegates females to second-class status.
``We in Egypt are accustomed to dramas that give audiences something that makes them feel good about themselves or helps them forget their worries,'' said director Magdi Ahmed Ali, 49, told The Associated Press.
``The story of `Girls' Secrets' has a great deal of honesty, but it's the shocking kind of honesty that may even be provocative.''
``Girls' Secrets'' is Ali's third feature-length drama.
His hugely successful ``The World, My Love'' - the story of three working class Cairo women with serious men problems - earned him a reputation as an acute social observer.
Azza Shalabi's screenplay is not the happy love story Egyptians are used to, and ``Girls' Secrets'' hasn't caught fire at the box office, where Hollywood blockbusters and lighter homegrown films are dominant.
``As a member of the audience, you feel that you're intimately attached to the film in many of its details, but it lacks the element of entertainment, which is important for cinema-goers,'' critic Tarek el-Shenawy wrote the popular weekly Rose el-Youssef.
The shy, quiet Yasmeen (17-year-old Maya Sheeha in her debut role) hides her pregnancy for months. After she gives birth and is still unconscious, the doctor, whose beard singles him out as a Muslim fundamentalist, takes it upon himself to circumcise her. Female genital mutilation, a ritual perceived by many Muslims as a way to protect a woman's virtue, is outlawed in Egypt but is thought to be still in practice.
``He is disciplining her properly for us,'' is all that Yasmeen's mother says when she learns of her daughter's circumcision. In contrast, Yasmeen's aunt, an academic, gives the doctor a tongue-lashing in a hospital corridor and threatens legal action, while the mother begs her to shut up and spare the family further embarrassment.
``Religion is above the law,'' the doctor shouts back.
``Girls' Secrets'' skillfully depicts the humiliation heaped on Muslim women who lose their virginity before marriage. The director and screenwriter insist the film doesn't set out to criticize the Islamic revival in Egypt. But it is the girl's devout Muslim family, rather than the relatively liberal family of the aunt, that is portrayed as dysfunctional, even though the film steers clear of stereotypes by showing compassion for Yasmeen's parents, too.
Yasmeen's father is briefly tempted to kill the baby by cutting off the oxygen supply to its incubator. Instead he tracks down the father, a teen-age neighbor. The youth is forced to marry Yasmeen. Then the baby dies and he is forced to divorce her.
In the last scene, Yasmeen is home from the hospital, looking woefully from her bedroom window at her teen-age lover, while her father busies himself installing a huge metal bolt on their apartment door.
AP-NY-04-15-01 1205EDT
Copyright 2001 The Associated Press.