This month ARTE the French-German Television station is celebrating its 20th Anniversary. They are showing award winning movies from the film Festivals of Europe. Caramel is a Lebanese production and refers to the sweet which is used in Oriental cultures also as a hair remover. The Beirut beauty salon where most of ''Caramel" takes place is likely to be a familiar type of establishment, even to people who have never been to the Lebanese capital. What the shop lacks in sleekness and chic it makes up for in the kind of friendly, sisterly warmth.
Women of various shapes, sizes, ages and backgrounds gather to bond and gossip. Their camaraderie is occasionally disrupted by a crisis, but you are likely to remember this charming film, directed by Nadine Labaki, less for its gently comic, mildly melodramatic plot than for its friendly and inviting atmosphere.
Ms. Labaki plays Layale, owner of the shop, which is called Si Belle. Like many unmarried women in the Middle East, Layale, in spite of her professional independence, lives with her parents. She is also having an affair with a married man and spends anxious hours waiting for him to call, ignoring the attentions of a handsome traffic policeman who is obviously smitten with her.
Layale’s friends and co-workers are supportive and tolerant of her, and also have troubles of their own. Jamale (Gisèle Aouad) is a recently divorced actress made frantic by the necessity of competing with younger women for work in television commercials. Nisrine (Yasmine Al Masri), a Muslim, is engaged and is worried about what will happen if her future husband discovers that she isn’t a virgin. Rima (Joanna Moukarzel), who cleans up around the shop and washes hair, develops a crush on an elegant client. And then there is Aunt Rose (Siham Haddad), a seamstress who lives down the street from Layale’s shop with her demanding, mentally disabled sister, Lili (Aziza Semaan).
Life for these women is not easy or especially fair, and each of them faces moments of humiliation, loneliness and potential heartbreak, there are also twinges of real pain and disappointment.
But in the best melodramatic tradition, their toughness, good humor and loyalty see them through.
I very much liked this movie because it shows life as it is and not as it is too often portrayed in the news. I know, for having lived for 8 years in the Middle-East, such charming people and their family, their stories and little dramas, hopes and joys. The movie touches on many topics, adultery, homosexuality, women's issues, marriage, family life. It brought back many memories of cities like Cairo, Amman, Damascus and Beirut, where I lived or worked or visited many times over.
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