Review of Caramel (2007) by Anthony K — 21 Jun 2008

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 Labaki, 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.