Caramel

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  April 6, 2009

  habitualdamnation

  Simplistic & defeatist, yet sincere & consolin. Good non-intrusive score too. On a non-related note that I'm sorry you'd have to read, this reminds me of the hot Lebanese milf and her 5 kids whom I met on the flight en route to the HK Filmart. Wish I could contact her.

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  August 30, 2008

  EarthlyAlien

  "They talk about love, when they talk about you. Love if you wish, but love as they do."
  
  As its title suggests, Caramel is a sweet, delightful affair, hiding any bitter undertones under a sprightly, glossy exterior. Fresh from commercials and music videos, novice d...( read more)irector-co-writer (and star) Nadine Labaki gathers five women around a Beirut beauty salon to address a range of issues facing Lebanese women - from extramarital affairs to religious dictates. Low on calories and not especially original but always amusing and charming, Caramel was destined to great success at home, though France may be its only major Western market, having premiered at Cannes in 2007 during the Directors fortnight
  
  
  
  From the first moments of Caramel, you know what you're in for. There's a pop-Arab soundtrack that bridges traditional and contemporary music, a whimsical montage of different women working their way through the streets of Beirut, and a serio-comic encounter between the beautiful heroine and the handsome fellow who's clearly smitten with her (a fact she hasn't yet noticed). Caramel is an ode to female bonding - it's a beauty-shop film, after all - a celebration of female sensuality and sensitivity and a series of interlocking love stories, that positively revels in the conventions of those genres. It's a reassuring and delicious film, but in no sense an adventurous one.
  
  Still, there's no doubt that Labaki deserves extra credit for making a film in an Arab nation that casually depicts friendship between Muslims and Christians, never mentions violence or political strife, and in its own gentle fashion sidles up against social issues that remain sensitive in that part of the world. Layale (played by the ravishing Labaki herself, a Penélope Cruz-style stunner) is sleeping with a married man, while one of the employees at her beauty salon, Rima (Joanna Moukarzel), is confronting her own attraction to women. All this is presented Arab cinema-style, with no touching between unmarried people. All we see of Layale's illicit liaisons is a parked car with two people inside, while Rima's big lesbian encounter involves washing a naive brunette's hair.
  
  Layale, a devout Christian who still lives with her parents, is so obsessed with her adulterous lover that she barely pays attention to Youssef (Adel Karam), the handsome, fully available and age-appropriate young policeman who's always hanging around the salon giving her parking tickets. Her best friend, Nisrine (Yasmine al-Masri), is a good Muslim girl who's engaged to be married - and needs to convince her future husband that she's still, you know, pure. (When it's simply not so.) Then there's Jamale (Gisèle Aouad), the aging soap actress trying to hold back the hands of time, and Rose (Siham Haddad), a still-beautiful modiste in her 60s responsible for caring for her ill sister, who may get one last chance at romance.
  
  All these characters' destinies unfold without the slightest hint of surprise. But Yves Sehnaoui's cinematography is always delectable; despite its issues, Beirut is a lovely Mediterranean city and a natural film location. Labaki's cast (most of them non-professional actors) handle the plot's broad twists and turns with brio. The young director herself is both a natural comedienne and a beauty; when Layale ends up (improbably enough) caramel-waxing the nether regions of Christine (Fadia Stella), her lover's high-spirited and charming wife, she approaches the task with a sleepy-eyed slow burn that's equal parts sadism and self-pity. Caramel didn't end up getting the foreign-language Oscar nomination Lebanon wanted so much, and probably wasn't distinctive enough to merit one. But it's a warm, irresistible treat.
  
  Caramel has been described frequently as "a Lebanese version of Steel Magnolias" and, while I usually hate those comparisons, it really is. It's a delightful valentine to women of a particular time and place. And, like Pedro Almodóvar's work, it never trivializes feminine anxieties. At first glance, Caramel is a chick flick, plain and simple. Labaki is gorgeous and young, and there is enough romanticism in the plot to satisfy the Cinderella side. On the other hand, Nisrine is about to undergo an operation that will fool her fiancé into thinking he's her first lover, and Jamale, the would-be actress, keeps pigeon blood in her purse so that she can stain the clothes she wears to auditions. Labaki is never uncomfortable showing both the best and worst of feminine nature and, more importantly, she doesn't portray her male characters as pricks - a mistake many "feminists" often commit.
  
  Labaki's directorial style continually underplays the passion she's packed into the screenplay, so that Caramel never feels formulaic. For instance, when Nisrine's mother explains married life to her on the eve of her wedding, Labaki keeps the camera in medium shot. It's the choice of a filmmaker who trusts her actors, and who understands that the standard editing - cuts to close-ups of Nisrine and her mother - would distract the viewer from the scene's inherent universality. Labaki's production design emphasizes the duality of feminine spaces, of women's bedrooms and beauty salons, which offer confinement and freedom - and the possibility of metamorphosis. When Layale's male admirer enters the salon, he must raise his voice to be heard. Once inside, he is welcomed as a guest: another customer relinquishes her chair for him. In that chair, however, he is transformed by the image the women have of him.
  
  Labaki's confidence is what makes Caramel such an unusual debut film. Whether she's directing a scene right out of screwball comedy - where she cuts between two telephone conversations, one real and one imagined - or a sequence that does not work so well, where Nisrine, Layale and Jamale are in a cab, Labaki allows events to unfold in what feels like real time. In the cab, the conversation is awkward and the scene is lengthy, but the writer-director plays it out nevertheless, convincing us of its authenticity. During the romantic telephone sequence, the camera spends a lot of time on Labaki's dazzling face, and if at first the scene appears showy, in the end it has a striking immediacy.
  
  Caramel wrapped shooting a week before the war of 2006 erupted in Lebanon. It seems bitterly ironic that a filmmaker so insistent on the possibility of a Lebanese film that avoided direct discussion of the wars of the '80s and '90s would then be faced with the reality of yet another conflict. In an interview, Labaki expressed her ambivalence about her own film during those first few months of the war, when she was editing in Paris, wondering if it was possible to escape war, and even feeling some guilt about portraying a topic that seemed outside of it. Eventually, she came to understand Caramel as "another way of surviving the war, of getting over it, of winning it and of getting revenge. It marks my revolt and my commitment." As with the work of all artists working in difficult conditions, this film is a form of resistance, not just surviving but also living, creating, and dreaming.

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  June 22, 2008

  her69eyes

  Last night I watched "Volver" for the second time. It's a very well written film with extraordinary performances and an unmistakable charm, however it's downfalls can be placed solely on the sheer amount of characters and things happening in the film. Writer and director Nadine L...( read more)abaki, who also stars as an appealing lead, suffers the same fate as Almodovar's film - it's at all times very engaging, but it's such a mish-mosh of anecdotes that it's hard to take much out of it in the end.
  
  "Caramel", like "Volver", is an extremely feminine film. It centers around the lives of five women at a beauty salon - think of it as a Lebanese version of "Beauty Shop". The title, "Caramel", references a mixture used for hair removal. This seems to illustrate what women go through and the film serves as a sort of appreciation for all that they do. Although the film is almost completely feminine with little screentime devoted to the male characters, we still do have some guys that are just "good guys", so it never comes off as sexist or unappealing to the male gender.
  
  Layale's story is the most developed in the film. She has a love affair with an older married man who won't leave his wife. Eventually, she's able to get his wife to come into the salon, just because she longed to see who this woman is that he won't give up. Pursuing Layale is a police officer, who Adel Karam plays with great elegance. There's a wonderful scene early on where he looks on from a window and imagines himself on the other end of Layale's phonecall.
  
  There's also a very interesting story in Rima, who is a lesbian co-worker of Layale. However, "lesbian" doesn't overwhelm her character or become a dominant trait - it's never shoved in our face. In fact, we never see her kissing a woman, saying she doesn't like men, or anything of that sort. Director Labaki has confidence that her audience will pick up on the subtleties presented and it's very refreshing. Eventually Rima becomes smitten with a female client, and they almost engage in some sort of foreplay through hair washing. I would have loved to see this story get more screentime.
  
  The rest of the stories are completely forgettable and flat, however. Not only do they hardly get any screentime, but the characters lack any sort of depth. For instance, Jamale is a character who is an aging actor wanting to hide her wrinkles and pass her next screen test. This fits in with the story as it shows what a woman will do and how hard she works to be presentable enough in the real world, however it's completely out of place since there was no sexual drive behind her story. Every other story had some sort of relationship involved, so her story stuck out like a sore thumb. It was a good performance and I really liked some of her scenes, such as the screen test where she's at her most vulnerable, but it was just out of place.
  
  "Caramel" is a film that rejects Hollywood conventions. Not everything is wrapped up in a completely satisfying way, and in some cases we don't really know what happens to the characters at the end. This was a refreshing breath of air, and I think there is absolutely an excellent film had it further developed it's secondary characters and kept it's focus solely on relationships.
  
  This film didn't blow me away, but it was certainly 90 minutes that went by very fast. If you're looking to expand your horizons in film viewing, this isn't a bad place to look. It's fun, and a unique spin on a fairly cliche concept.

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  March 17, 2008

  flickfever

  This film paints a beautiful picture of life for women in Lebanon. The movie is devoid of bombs, terrorists, military and any of the usual suspects in movies that take place in countries such as Lebanon.
  
  Instead, the film explores the trials and tribulations of five women who a...( read more)re connected by the work they share in a beauty salon. The bond they've created is a net of trust they can be assured of when it comes to confiding in one another.
  
  Whether it be troubles with men; troubles with customers; troubles with dealing with aging; or anything else--these women are strong characters that exude a feminist aura that is all-but absent from the portrait the American media is willing to present us with.
  
  This movie is a small, foreign-language gem that deals with women; is directed by a woman; but is no way a chick flick. It showcases the way of life in a country that I knew nothing about except for what I see in the news--and it's beautiful to see life being lived to the fullest by the inhabitants of a region with such a bad reputation.

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  November 5, 2009

  mvieaddict

  
  When I got Caramel recommended I was sceptical, maybe I won't like, because it handle some issues that I was not interested in. But ...( read more)I am glad I watched, it was such an enjoyable movie. It was a story of five women who are all connected through life in a beauty shop.It mostly focuses on sisterhood, homosexuality, adultery, religion and love.I would recommend this movie to anyone because it was heartwarming and funny. Any woman would be able to see themselves in at least one of these women in this movie. Was worth watching.

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  November 7, 2009

  ghettoqueen747

  I thought this movie was quite good. i identified with the subjects and I thought the concept was good.

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  November 3, 2009

  quichefolle

  Encore un film qui nous demontre que les femmes libanaises sont vraiment belles...
  
  Leger, sensuel, emouvant et drole. Tant pis pour le ramassis de stereotypes present dans ce film!

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  October 26, 2009

  rjeruiz23

  great film from Israel

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  September 1, 2009

  claykennedy

  A beautiful little Lebonese tapestry, honest and warm.

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  July 23, 2009

  javaursula128

  Anyway, he skipped the cake...

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