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World Film Beat: Nadine Labaki's "Caramel"

Posted by Phil Nugent

Caramel, the first feature by director-writer (and star) Nadine Labaki, is a women's hang-out movie set in a beauty salon, where the three-member staff hash out their problems with each other and their customers, who have problems of their own to spread out on the table. What makes this warm, funny film notable is its cultural context: Labaki, who worked her way up through music videos and short films, is Lebanese, and her movie is set in Beirut, not a location that Western audiences associate with chick flicks. (Labaki completed shooting on the low-budget production in the summer of 2006, just nine days before Israel starting lobbing missiles into Lebanon.) In an interview with Filmmaker magazine, Labaki says that she wanted to make a movie that, by making Beirut seem like "a vibrant, happy, colorful place, in spite of everything", she could counter "that cliché of a country that is at war. That's it, that's all you know about Lebanon or Beirut, it's the only thing that you understand about this country. 'Oh, it's a place where there's war.' It's important that people know what kind of people we are and how we deal with everyday problems, and the nature of these people who are very warm-hearted, who have a good sense of humor, who have this strong will to live and who are very colorful, very warm." At the same time, growing up in a virtual war zone helped shape her future as a filmmaker: she remembers that "most of my childhood was spent at home because we couldn't go out, there was no school for a long time, so I saw and understood the world through TV. That's how I learned English, that's how I decided to become a filmmaker. I learned that through films I could be able to create realities that are different from my reality, and worlds that are different from my world. That was my childhood, just me in front of the TV watching films."

When war broke out again after her film was shot, "It was something unimaginable to me, I couldn't believe it was happening again. You have a very big sense of guilt because you're a filmmaker and you don't know how you can help and how your art can do something for your country. So it was very hard — but then I understood that maybe it was my mission to make this film that shows something else of my country, a new image." Since then, Caramel has played successfully at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival and is currently in contention for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. With its glossy look and feel-good comic cameraderie, it's an obvious calling card for Hollywood, but Labaki isn't sure what she's going to do next; she has plans to start work on her next screenplay soon, "but it's still not very clear yet. I have a theme, but it's too early to talk about it. I still need some time to become obsessed with it." And though she won't rule out coming to America, for now, "I just feel like I want to keep making Lebanese films in Lebanon with Lebanese people."


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