SUKKAR BANAT (CARAMEL)

(Roadside Attractions)
Runtime: 90 min

Is this Lebanon’s answer to Sex and the City or My big ethnic Lebanese wedding with no profanity at all? At first I was skeptical, since it looks like just another melancholy chic flick but it turns out that, even with all female cast, it has a universal message to men. The fact that this film comes from war ravaged Lebanon also attracts me, will they show some war time struggle?

Five women in Lebanon have to tackle many universal issues, forbidden love and desires, traditions, repressed sexuality, and fear of getting old.

The title itself refers to a method used in the Middle East to remove unwanted body hair. Instead of using wax, they use caramel, consisted of heating sugar, water and lemon juice makes it irressistible to eat.

Layale (Nadine Labaki) who works in a beauty salon in Beirut has a dead end affair with a married man. Meanwhile her friend, Nisrine (Yasmine Al Masri), will soon be getting married with a Muslim man but the fact that she’s not a virgin troubles her.

Then Rima (Joanna Moukarzel) has a subtle and sensual lesbian attraction and Jamale (Gisèle Aouad) refuses to acknowledge that she had entered menopause, but the one who steal the show is Rose (Sihame Haddad), a tailor with a shop next to the salon. She had devoted her life to taking care of her mentally unbalanced older sister Lili (Aziza Semaan), but has found her first love.

Sihame Haddad steal the film with her heart wrenching acting as an old woman who’s being torn between fighting for her true love and taking care of her older sister. These women were all congregated in one beauty parlor run by the two of them.

What makes this film also warm and universal is as if the viewers were given a peeping hole on Lebanese daily life without war and bombs exploding. Unlike Sex and the City with the usual shocking candid talk, Caramel manages to maintain attraction by small scenes, like a woman and a girl separated by aquarium or how one character dyed their hair into red.

As expected, this debut from actress director Nadine Labaki is chatty and could easily move towards a generic chic flick, but it also give a warm feeling of the melting pot of Lebanese culture, once a while they switch between Arabic and French they even have to struggle with their culture.

As a guy who used to watch endless numbing action or gut wrenching indie drama, I have to say that this film is worth watching, even for those who hate chick flick, since this is not a chick flick; it is a celebration of women from Lebanon.