Caramel (2007)

This is as seductive as the women it depicts. Women directing is a field i haven't explored so much for now, and i think it can be really rewarding, taking the samples i've had so far.

This was, as well known, a Lebanese film, directed by a woman, depicting free-thinking women. This is enough trivia to make it worth watching, and a landmark for a country which, not being as immersed in fundamentalism as other Islamic countries is still quite overshadowed by them. So, there is a line of commentary about this that goes on that. I skip it.

What interested me here was the sweetness of everything. Sweet as caramel? Sure, but more. There are true urges, true fundamental issues debated here, without being mentioned directly, so they have to be told visually, and that's the sweet spot i deeply appreciate.

There are no depressive pseudo intellectual babbling here, only true needs by these women, with truer existential concerns, that go way beyond fundamentalism, women's oppression or "feelings". What women fight for is a way to be, a way to live, they look for their own mood; that mood the film itself has (beautiful cinematography). Each of these women go around adversities (the fake virgin, the lesbians) or face them directly and move on (the older lady, the protagonist). So in a way, the stories we watch is probably the very story of the making of this film. Though this has french support, i'm guessing that Labaki went around and faced directly similar existential concerns while making this. Well, she got out nicely, to my eyes.

It's nice to have women filmed, maybe cinema can become the best way to watch women through women's eyes, literally. From my short viewings of women's films, it's a much less erotic look but a much greater insight into their soul. I can live with that.

My opinion: 4/5

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Fmovies: A very good impression was left in me after viewing Caramel, on the stories, the scenario, the acting, the comedy/drama smooth transitions, the cinematography... It was all very impressive, a well made movie, something the Lebanese cinematography has been missing for a long time.

Most of all innovative for the usual oriental mood. A excessive dose of reality coupled with genuine laughing moments, made Caramel rise above the usual, traditional Lebanese movie making. And last but not least, great acting. I know people don't like to compare here, but I can say that the acting was altogether, as a result, above anything else I've seen in Lebanon's movie history.

The one thing that lacked in Caramel was a great revelation of some sort. Maybe that's just what I wished to see. There was a couple of discreet ones, but I think the intention of the movie was to project a hidden reality to most people, and it succeeded in doing so.

Congratulations to Nadine Labaki and all the team behind Caramel, go see Caramel, a wonderful experience, I will be waiting anxiously for Nadine's next wonder!

A blend of the unique and the familiar, Caramel, Lebanon's official Academy Award submission for Best Foreign Film 2007, is a bittersweet comedy set in Beirut, Lebanon, a city on the road to recovery from a civil war. The familiar part is that like Barbershop the film takes place in a beauty salon called Si Belle where a group of women work and congregate as they deal with problems of thwarted romance, marriage, aging, and sexuality. The unique part is that these personal stories occur in a city where religious and political conflict is never too far from the surface, though there is no mention of Israelis or Palestinians. The title by the way has nothing to do with very sweet chewy candy but refers to a sticky concoction used by the hairdressers to rip out unwanted facial hair. Ouch!

The cast consists of excellent non-professional actors including the director and co-writer Nadine Labaki who plays Layale, a single, 30-year old salon owner who happens to be Christian. Layale is involved in an affair with a happily married man and ignores the romantic overtures of a handsome traffic cop (Adel Karam) who openly flirts with her while giving her parking tickets. Her best friend is co-worker Nisrine (Yasmine Al Masri), a Muslim who, in a state of panic that her future husband will discover that she is not a virgin, goes to a plastic surgeon to attempt to fix the problem.

Other offbeat characters are Aunt Rose, a sweet old seamstress who lives with her slightly demented sister (Aziza Semaan) and Jamale (Gisele Aouad), an aging actress who goes through mechanical auditions for commercials but senses that her best days are behind her. Though the salon environment is quite nurturing and the women are open about expressing their feelings and desires, it is quite evident that they operate under a society governed by traditional Islamic law. Layale learns that you cannot book a hotel room unless you can prove that you are either married or a prostitute, and a couple is harassed by a policeman merely for sitting in their car and talking.

Rima (Joanna Moukarzel) is attracted to a beautiful long-haired woman (Fatmeh Safa) who comes to the shop for shampoos but she is reluctant to openly express her feelings. While Caramel might have veered into soap opera under less capable hands, the director carefully avoids the Hollywood treatment. She has created strong-minded women who have built the kind of community in which they can turn to each other for mutual support. Dedicating her humorous, quietly engaging film "to my Beirut", Ms. Labaki has woven a tapestry of the fading beauty of the ancient city, old traditions being confronted by the new, and the discovery of the bonds between people that make relationships worth celebrating.

Caramel fmovies. This movie is about friendship. With a beautiful narration style, the movie focuses on the most ordinary and mundane people and follows them in their every day life. Although every one of them is dealing with significant challenges, a deep sense of love, friendship and social consciousness allows them to transcend their daily toils. The movie shatters any prejudices about sectarianism, Muslim versus Christian, young versus old, pro-West versus pro-Arab, and shows a Lebanese society where different cultures can hold on to their differing norms and traditions yet co-exist beautifully. This is the Lebanon I have always known. The movie helps dispel stereotypes about Middle-Easterners and promotes tolerance and friendship. Do not miss out on this great movie.

In Beirut, six women and six stories meet around a women's beauty parlour: Layale, in love with a married man who will never leave his wife for her, Nisrine, who is going to get married and doesn't know how to tell his boyfriend she is no longer virgin, Rima, who doesn't accept to be attracted by women, Jamale, obsessed by age and physical appearance and Rose, who has sacrificed the best years of her life to look after her sister. Inside the hot, colourful and magnetic atmosphere of the old-fashioned beauty parlour, between brush strokes and caramel wax we hear them speaking about sex, love, maternity, with the freedom and intimacy that only women can show.

The result is a delicate fresco on women, capable of getting straightforwardly to the heart of women, but not only. A very delicate, never vulgar watercolour, depicting women involved in what seem to be out of time female problems and concerns. A fresco which also deals with hot topical issues, such as war, the living together between Catholics and Muslims, the clash of different cultures, but never losing its amusing and amused tone. In the end, we are both stunned and comforted by the strength that only women can show when they join together and problems are to be faced.

The director and actress Nadine Labaki manages to render the female daily melancholy, without ever falling into the banal or the cliché, but through a powerful and intense synaesthetic strategy: through eyes, smells, sounds, in such a poignant way, as to make us able to touch, to smell, to taste what is being performed, as if we were absorbed in that same intense atmosphere. A word must be spent for the soundtrack, well and wisely dosed, and never boring. A feel-good and intelligent movie I would suggest to all women, and, why not, also to men.

AMAZING!!! so subtle .. so refined .... so touchy ... so genuine.... Some parts of the movie could be titled " Oriental Sex and City" , yet nothing compares to Caramel ..... Living in Beirut but very often in the Netherlands, I am sure that the movie would be a big hit in Amsterdam. I recommended it to so many friends abroad living in different countries and the feedback was unanimous : just amazing !! The beauty of all the characters combined with the oriental scents and the pot-pourri of the nicest feelings that drive the life of human beings could not be pictured in a nicest way!!! thanks again and again to all the protagonists and to the Director.

PS: Music is just fantastic !!!!