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Dimanche, août 1st, 2010
SUKKAR BANAT (CARAMEL) marks a pleasing directorial debut for the stunningly ravishing Lebanese actress Nadine Labaki. Though films about the private lives of a circle of women who glean in a mutual watering hole to gossip, part joys and exertion of fancy affairs, as well as being the essential succor group they all need are plentiful (deem STEEL MAGNOLIAS), few reach as end to the intimacy shared by this talented cast whose disparate problems withhold the film flying. The screenplay by Rodney El Haddad and Jihad Hojeily is greatly enhanced by the cinematography by Yves Sehnaoui with the atmospheric musical earn by Khaled Mouzannar, but it is the impeccable cast that completes this tender, laughable, and gently sentimental small sage.
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The film shows us a Lebanon we rarely observe. The setting is a Beirut beauty salon La Belle owned by Layale (Nadine Labaki) whose frequent absences from her state of business are due to trysts with a married man, trysts often delayed by a police officer, the beautiful and infatuated Youssef (Adel Karram) . Working in the shop is Rima (Johanna Moukarzel) whose same sex infatuation with a lovely patron is subtly explored, and regulars in the salon include an aging wannabe actress Jamale (Gisèle Aouad), a non virgin bride to be Nisrine (Yasmine Elmasri) and an older seamstress Rose (Sihame Haddad) who has elected to relinquish her hopes for esteem with a willing and potential elderly man Charles (Dimitri Staneofski) in favor of continuing to care for her humorously senile mother Lili (Aziza Semaan) .
How these unforgettable characters interact, displacing each other’s anxieties by caring friendship freely shared, offers each of these graceful actresses many moments of glory in addition to creating a pleasing ensemble carry out as sensitively directed by Nadine Labaki. This slight film (in Arabic and French with subtitles) is a complete pleasure and will likely plot attention to future films from Lebanon. Grady Harp, July 08
“Caramel” is not what you’d ask of Lebanese filmmaking and in particular movies about that most alarmed of their cities - Beirut. I found it touching, unbelievably insightful and genuinely romantic too - it’s one of the loveliest watches I’ve had the pleasure of seeing in years.
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The largely unknown cast is suited and each deserves specific mention:
NADINE LABAKI plays LAYALE - the sexy yet scatterbrained 35-year venerable owner of “Si Belle” - a salon that acts as emotion-central for co-workers and girlfriends. Layale is having a giddy but demeaning affair with a married man whom we never observe except as a shadow in a car under a bridge - or hear him - as he honks his horn outside the premises for her to arrive running…
YASMINE AL MASRI plays NISRINE - one of Layale’s best workers - the gorgeous and young Nisrine is having doubts about her forthcoming marriage to BASSAM a headstrong original man played by ISMAL ANTAR. Bassam is a man who will choose on the oppressive plot and even God rather than capitulate; Nisrine’s also terrorized that Bassam might not want her should he obtain out about her less-than-virginal past
GISELE AOUAD plays JAMALE TARABAY - a customer and friend of the younger ladies. Jamale’s mid to unhurried 40’s, an actress who is getting too veteran to nab the lucrative advert roles anymore and goes to dismal and desperate lengths to cease young-looking.
JOANNA MOUKARZEL plays the slightly butch RIMA - a lowly washer of hair in the saloon who falls silently and breathlessly in admire with a splendid woman who walks in off the street one afternoon. She is played by FATME SAFA - and may even fragment with vexed Rima the care for that dares not speaks its name…
SIHAM HADDAD plays the stoical and ceaselessly loving ROSE (Rima’s 60+ Aunt) who lives across the street from the salon in her haberdashery business. LILI, her even older sister (played to pretty perfection by AZIZA SEMAAN) is a mouthy ragged curmudgeon who picks up bits of paper off the streets and tells everyone there’s a plane coming to win her and her lover away. Rose is driven to despair by Lili’s increasingly difficult senility until one day a gentleman caller comes in for a suit alteration. His name is CHARLES played by a debonair DIMITRI STANCOFSKY - Charles says small, but his kind and warm glances reawaken a tenderness in Rose she’d long belief gone - and of course poses her with a outrageous family conundrum….
ADEL KARAM plays YOUSSEF the parking-ticket Policeman who longs for Layale from a distance, but she is too busy screwing up her life to explore. Youssef is radiant, decent and legal for her, if only Layale would close sticking her tongue out at him…
FADIA STELLA plays the redheaded and heavenly CHRISTINE KHOURI, wife of Rahid, the feckless husband we never view. She comes calling to “So Radiant” for a free waxing one afternoon after a phone-call the previous day to her home by a sappily desperate Layale. Or perhaps Christine’s there to size up the threat to her marriage and her radiant young daughter…
There are many other cameos and they’re all safe.
Nadine Labaki - the famous actress and director - co-wrote the script with RODNEY EL HADDAD and JIHAD HOJEILY. It’s her 1st film and she could easily have shirked the undeniable downside of their world in order to effect the film a more enjoyable package for Western viewers - but she doesn’t. The eternal shame heaped on women by virtue of religious guilt in all things that they do - the double standards of the authorities - the legacy of war lingering malevolently in the background - all of is subtly woven into crucial scenes. Their lives are not given to you in a preachy or clichéd manner, but in a scheme that shows you unprejudiced what a Middle Eastern woman has to cope with nowadays. They laugh like us, they bawl, they triumph, they fabricate their mistakes, engage stock, procure aid up again - and try their damnedest to be fresh in a world inextricably tied into a two-thousand year dilapidated past. Family acts as the bedrock - friends are cherished - and esteem - like in every society - is the simple and deeply sought after goal for all. It’s a certain and refreshing film and a opinion of Beirut city life that you fair don’t ever look.
The script is corpulent of deftly insightful stuff too - scenes that are objective so humorous, tender, black, romantic: the kid under the family dinner table looking up Nisrine’s skirt because she and Bassam were playing touchy-feely legs and he knows the woman can’t rat him out; the tenderness between Charles and Rose as he quietly sugars her tea in his apartment after she’s returned his altered gentleman’s trousers; Jamale sat on a toilet using a bottle of ink on tissue paper to feign her peaceful having youth; Rima’s sparkling face as she falls in worship, softly washing the long flowing jet-black hair of a stunningly blooming customer in the lean-back sink…her mammoth brown eyes as she looks abet up at Rima….and smiles…
To effortlessly depart from the old-world respect of the elderly couple to the sensual playfulness of the young lesbians in the salon is fabulous writing.
“Caramel” blew me away - it made me ache for these superior people and their hopes and aspirations and dreams. But if you want true persuasion, there are FOUR nomination references on the DVD’s rear sleeve, one of which is the WINNER of the AUDIENCE AWARD at the “San Sebastian Film Festival”. Not the critics - not the industry insiders - the ‘audience’ award. That public knew a winner when they saw one.
Joy, pride and heart went into the making of this miniature foreign film (called “Sukkar Banat” in some territories) - and as the credits role and Nadine Labaki’s dedication tells you the movie is “For My Beirut” - it’s hard not to be impossibly moved.
Put “Caramel” high on your rental/to grasp list. And then execute a beeline for Mira Nair’s “The Namesake” - another peach of a movie - chop with the same tenderness and grace.
PS: the title of this review is a lyric from a treasure song sung by Rima at Nisrine’s wedding
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