Current release: CARAMEL
I took in CARAMEL recently, which I'd guess you'd kind of refer to a romantic comedy. It's set in Beirut however, so there's no Hugh Grant foppish shenanigans or Jennifer Garner being all dizzy.
Set in and around a beauty salon, the story takes in the adventures and misadventures of the crowd of people who work there and live in the area. There's the one who is having an affair with a married man; the one who's secretly a lesbian; the one who doesn't want her future husband to discover that he won't be the first; and so on.
What's interesting about all these problems is that they are placed in the context of a society very different from our own where such things provoke different reactions from society than they would over here. Extra-marital affairs and casual pre-marital sex? Par for the course in a Hollywood chick-flick or British rom-com.
Where it falls down is trying to cram them all into one film. There are too many characters and too much going on - in fact it feels like the movie has already been going on for some time when we start and similarly feels like it gets cut off before it quite finishes. A sharper focus on one or two of the individuals would have been preferable in my eyes, particularly on the lead character played by Nadine Labaki.
Full marks for aesthetics though. The music is agreeable and, suitably enough for a film entitled CARAMEL, the whole film is shot in a gorgeous orangey-brown palette that makes it look terrific.
Arthouse meets chick-flick.
Set in and around a beauty salon, the story takes in the adventures and misadventures of the crowd of people who work there and live in the area. There's the one who is having an affair with a married man; the one who's secretly a lesbian; the one who doesn't want her future husband to discover that he won't be the first; and so on.
What's interesting about all these problems is that they are placed in the context of a society very different from our own where such things provoke different reactions from society than they would over here. Extra-marital affairs and casual pre-marital sex? Par for the course in a Hollywood chick-flick or British rom-com.
Where it falls down is trying to cram them all into one film. There are too many characters and too much going on - in fact it feels like the movie has already been going on for some time when we start and similarly feels like it gets cut off before it quite finishes. A sharper focus on one or two of the individuals would have been preferable in my eyes, particularly on the lead character played by Nadine Labaki.
Full marks for aesthetics though. The music is agreeable and, suitably enough for a film entitled CARAMEL, the whole film is shot in a gorgeous orangey-brown palette that makes it look terrific.
Arthouse meets chick-flick.
posted by Alan at 6:17 pm
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