Ibrahim Eloouhabi: The "I Killed a Kid" kid tells us his pronouns, models some Liberace outfits. Is that enough? With n*de Costner and Moroccan dudes

 

Link to the n*de dudes

I felt like I should profile one of the actors from In the Hand of Dante, to get something of value from it (other than picking up my bilingual edition of The Inferno again).  So  I checked the actors who played teenage Dante, the murdered Bartender, the guy who killed his father, the boy with the big knife (who was killed), and Mephistopheles, but none of them were suitable.  How about the boy who tells his uncle, "I just killed a kid"?  It's not clear in the movie (nothing is), but he grows up to be focus character Nick (Oscar Isaacs, below).

Ibrahim Elouahabi gives his pronouns (he/his), and speaks Arabic.  That's enough for a profile. 

Not just Arabic.  He also speaks Turkish and Darija (Moroccan Arabic) and he is studying French. 

N*de Moroccan guy on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends

Darija is not intelligible with Modern Standard Arabic: it has reduced the number of vowels, adapted its grammar to Tamazight (Berber), and borrowed much of its vocabulary from French: forshita (fork), tabla (table), boulis (police).

Ibrahim's family is from Morocco, but he was born "on the vibrant streets of Brooklyn," according to his hyperbolic IMDB bio.  He began his career in 2019, as a fashion model for Zara, Nike, and Macy's.  Soon he was performing in commercials for Brawny paper towels, Magic Spoon (upscale cereal), and Marriot Vacation Club.

His on-screen performances begin with two shorts, The Prescription (2020), no description available, and Roque (2022), about Salvadorean poet Roque Dalton.  Ibrahim plays Roque as a boy, and Jaden McKnew (left) as an adult.

Next came a small role in Audrey's Children (2024), a biopic of Dr. Audrey Evans, who developed "revolutionary treatments" for sick children.

In Ebenezer the Traveler (2024), the ghosts of Scrooge, his sister, Jacob Marley, and a grown-up Tiny Tim are assigned to help an aspiring singer in modern-day Oklahoma.  I think Ibrahim plays her son.

More after the break

"In the Hand of Dante": Film noir about an original Dante manuscript, set in a 1950s-era 2001. And it gets more confusing. And homophobic.

 Link to the n*de dudes

I love the Divine Comedy, at least the Inferno, where Virgil guides Dante through the stages of hell.  He puts the sodomites in the Seventh Circle, where fire rains down on those who "do violence against nature," but at least it permitted me to mention LGBT people in an Italian class in the 1980s, when otherwise the rule was "Don't mention them, they don't exist."  

So I'm going to watch the new movie In the Hands of Dante, about the discovery of an original Divine Comedy manuscript.  Maybe there will be gay characters, probably not, but I'll still get to hear that beginning phrase again: Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita, mi ritrovai per una selva oscura (at the midpoint of life's journey, I found myself lost in a dark forest).

We've all been there.

Scene 1: Dante climbs a rocky cliff.  Meanwhile, sometime in the 1940s or 1950s, an obnoxious novelist (Oscar Isaacs) complains to his friend that his books are too brilliant to be edited. "I'd rather the stableboy f*ck my wife than see my work edited." Heterosexual identity established immediately after his obnoxiousness.

Oscar Isaacs' backside is on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends

"So, what's your book about?"

"It's a translation of Dante's Divine Comedy. I've been working on it for ten years." 

Friend squeezes his shoulder.  "You're still hot after ten years."  Wait -- are you flirting with him?

" By the way, who is Dante?"  Say what?  Who doesn't know Dante?

"An old dead guy.  But he got trapped in the cage of rhyme and meter.  I'm breaking out, so my translation will be far superior to the original."  The greatest work in Italian literature?  You planning to improve on "Hamlet" next?

Scene 2:  Newark, 1969.  A young boy enters a middle-class house and tells his Uncle, "I just killed some kid."  He explains that the boy (Gavin Weingarten) had a big knife, and asked if he wanted to die.  He tried to defend himself, they struggled, and he managed to stab Knife Boy.  

Since he doesn't know who the boy was, and no one saw them, Uncle says that he should forget about it.  But don't make "malarkey" a habit in the future.  Are you going to grow up to be Our Hero? But you're way too young. That would make the "I'm a better writer than Dante" conversation sometime in the 2000s, and it was obviously in the 1950s.  Maybe Uncle is Our Hero?

Scene 3: Bora Bora, seaside, 2001. Our Hero on a hammock, writing in his notebook about "creamy white gardenia blossoms" and "faded petroglyphs."  So you must be the Boy who killed someone, now middle aged, but it's a parallel world with the look and feel of the 1950s: no computers or cell phones, men wear hats and smoke constantly, writers use pencils. 

Our Hero tells us that the Nine Heavens of the Paradiso is a bad translation; It's really Nine Skies.  The last and rarest of them is the Sky of Illimitibleness.  Or you could say "Endless," if you weren't a pretentious jerk.

Cut to the Young Dante sitting under a tree, looking at the Illimitible Sky.  

Scene 4:  New York, 2001, "That time when the daylight sky was an oppressive, low-lying glare of white, and the dark of night was..."  So, summer.  Is this one of your stories, or really happening in-universe?    A greasy-haired guy named Louie (Gerard Butler, but blond and greasy) saunters into a closed bar and orders a Dewars and water.  He criticizes the bartender's moustache: "You see a guy with a moustache, he's either a cop or a (homophobic slur)."

I expected L'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle, the love that moves the sun and the stars, and I'm getting Charles Bukowski, homophobia, and a parallel world where the 1950s never ended. 

"By the way, you ever take it up the *ss?" Louie asks.  "Might make a man out of you."  But then he calls him a c*cksucker.  Twice.  Are you homophobic or not, buddy?  

He criticizes the Bartender and his wife for being excessively ugly, and threatens his nine-year old daughter.

Next topic of conversation: the Bartender's Uncle, "a real fuckup," who opened the bar, but pissed his money away gambling.  Wait, is that the Uncle from 1969?  So the Bartender is Our Hero?  But he's supposed to be in Bora Bora, writing pretentious crap.  And the Uncle was elderly in 1969. No way he's alive in 2001.  

Unc owes the gang a lot of money, so his nephew the Bartender is going to provide it.  Louie takes tonight's proceeds, $1,200, then orders the Bartender to go downtown.  But he shoots him as soon as he gets on his knees.

What does this have to do with Dante?

Scene 4: Our Hero crying as he looks at the picture of a little girl.  Is this the Bartender's daughter, who was just threatened?

 He tells us that a young adult lady called him Nick, and then "Daddy."  So you were dating the Bartender's daughter -- but she was nine years old in 2001.  Have we jumped ahead to 2026?  Or is she a different person, and you were looking at a photo of the bartender's daughter to confuse viewers?  He kisses her goodbye as she is crying.  I'm crying, too, in  frustration over this nonsensical plot.

 Cut to the EMTs taking her body away. 

Cut to Our Hero, drunk and injured (a bloody bandage on his leg), climbing the rocks of Bora Bora.  He falls into the water, delighted: "I feel nothing of these open rocks."

More after the break.  Caution: It gets even more confusing, but there are d*cks