Directed by Nadine Labaki. Starring Nadine Labaki, Yasmine Elmasri, Joanna Moukazel, Gisele Auoad, Adel Karam, Sihame Haddad PG cert, Cineworld/IFI/ Light House/Screen, Dublin, 95 min ***
CARAMELis a rarity among movies set in the Lebanon in that it's not about war and it doesn't use the city merely as an exotic backdrop for a globetrotting thriller. The only politics on view are sexual, and observed from the point of view of women in a patriarchal society.
Caramelis set in and around a Beirut hair and beauty salon, Si Belle, which is never very busy, although nobody bothers to repair the sign over its door. The staff and their customers are more preoccupied with their personal problems.
Si Belle's owner, Layale (Nadine Labaki) is 30 but still lives with her parents and has had a secret affair with a married man for a year. Nisrine (Yasmine Elmasri) is a Muslim about to get married and worried that her fiance will discover she's not a virgin. The youngest of the staff, Rima (Joanna Moukazel), fancies an attractive woman whose long dark hair she shampoos sensually.
A regular customer is Jamale (Gisele Auoad), a struggling actress desperately trying to conceal how she has aged and persisting in auditioning to play characters younger than she is. And Rose (Sihame Haddad), the local seamstress, unexpectedly finds the prospect of love in her 60s but is constrained by responsibility for her delusional elderly sister (Aziza Semaan).
The film observes their lives in a milieu where the morality police accuse Nisrine and her fiance of "indecent activity" just because they're sitting in his car at night. Attempting to book a hotel for a night with her lover, Layale is turned down several times because she can't provide proof that she is married.
Carameltakes its title from the salon's concoction for waxing unwanted body hair. That is another source of pain in the lives of these women, whose solidarity helps them deal with their problems. The template is familiar from many US movies: putting protagonists through laughter and tears, and achieving resolutions that are generally sentimental and predictable.
Most of the actors are non-professionals, with uneven results when some are allowed to overact. Labaki, however, is radiant in the central role. Having directed some commercials and music videos, she makes her feature film debut as a screenwriter and director with Caramel, which is attractively photographed in a riot of colour.
MICHAEL DWYER
• Screening with Caramelat the Light House Cinema is Irish writer-director Rebecca Daly's Joyriders, which won the 2007 Ifta award for best Irish short film. Leanne Kearney plays a young Dublin girl, obsessed with driving, who has a habit of stealing cars.
