After the credits rolled, my mother switched to the news, where foreign diplomats were urging Tunisians to "refrain from violence and maintain law and order" in response to protests erupting across the nation. Foreigners, and specifically Westerners, often speak of the Middle East as an unsolvable enigma, a conflict so intricately knotted that to unravel it would be to preform a miracle. The Arab mind is framed as an inscrutable one, and Arab culture as backwards and archaic, the root of all our wars and quarrels.
The Arab woman, if spoken of at all, is never an autonomous person with her own needs, beliefs, and motivations. Neither is she brave and valiant in the face of her supposedly barbarian oppressors— instead, she is battered, beaten, silenced, a "gotcha" card drawn whenever Arabs insist that we too are human, that after decades of devastating wars and brutal dictatorships, we deserve the dignity of directing our own political affairs.
In Caramel, Nadine Labaki shatters a double illusion: that which foreigners hold of Arabs' primitive one-dimensionality, and that which Arab men hold of women's pliant complacency. The multi-protagonist structure reinforces the fact that the Arab female experience is not a monolith— rather, it is rich, and varied, and always bittersweet. We are introduced to the working class Arab woman from a variation of vantages; a butch lesbian, the "other woman", a non-virgin marrying a Muslim man, a middle aged washed-up actress, and an old lady who gives up love for her mentally ill sister are all convened in the very same hair salon, and despite the multitude of plot-lines, nothing feels crammed, rushed, or insignificant. Specifically, female queerness is explored with a level of care and vulnerability that is entirely unprecedented in Arab film; it is subtle enough to feel sacred, but not too subtle as to feel brushed over or locked away.
It is important to clarify that this film is not overtly or explicitly political; however, like all good Arab art, it holds strong political undertones, because our lives themselves have been tainted in such politics for as long as I can remember. To portray the working class in any light is inherently political; to portray the working class in such a dynamic and honest light is truly revolutionary.
Caramel is packed with scenes that imprint into your mind like sunlight on film (think: Nisrine and her fiancé at the police station, Reema in the subway, Layal on the motel bed, the French man alone in a coffeeshop), but one deserves a special mention. There's something inherently romantic about levantine dialects, and particularly the Lebanese one: it's softer around the edges, and lilts with the weight of untold secrets. When Youssef narrated Layal's phone call from across the street, I lost it entirely; my insides melted to mush. I have never seen a man admire a woman in a manner so pure and so entirely void of predation, of possessiveness, of the sadistic need to own the female form. Also, his mustache reminds me of Ghassan Kanafani, and coming from me, there is no higher compliment.
This film radiates warmth. The combination of summery lighting/coloring, the occasional grain as a result of shooting in 35mm, and mise en scène that's simultaneously subtle and perfectly framed allows you to forget your identity as spectator and become fully immersed in the sequence of events. I've never been to Beirut, but Labaki's love letter to her home city is so powerful that I found myself drawing parallels to Cairo (which is also brimming with worn-out Francophone architecture and endearingly kooky old ladies) and feeling immensely homesick. The use of a purely Arabic score makes me so, so, so insanely happy, as well as deeply nostalgic for a time when the only language of my thoughts was that of my mother tongue.
One day, I will meet Nadine Labaki, and I will probably cry. I don't know how I could ever doubt my duty to create, or the validity of my voice, when Caramel exists.
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