Layale runs a beauty shop in Lebanon a focal point for many of the Muslim and Christian women. Her clandestine affair with a married man creates problems in her life and blinds her to the attentions of the quiet traffic cop who seems to find every excuse to hang around the salon. In a strict country, her hair stylist Nisrine is engaged to a young man whose behaviour is both liberal and shocking. The potential chaos is not reserved for the staff alone as women gather together in the Salon to talk openly about their lives all the time stripping their legs with Caramel...

Caramel (Sukkar Banat, 2007 - 1 hr, 31 min, 45 sec) is a powerfully gentle comedy drama which focuses on the lives of a number of women who are connected by the beauty salon. The film was written, directed and starred first time director Nadine Labaki, and was co-written by Rodney El Haddad and Jihad Hojeily - also both first time writers. The film also had the honour of being Lebanon’s first ever submission for an academy award, in the category best foreign film, in 2007.

The title of the film refers to the mixture of water, sugar and lemon juice which is heated and placed on the legs of the women in the salon to strip the hairs in their pursuit of beauty. Whilst this is not the only thing which unites these women, for a man it was the most frightening part of the film. What we have here is a bittersweet examination of the lives of these funny and strong women, whose division along religious lines melts away as soon as they enter the salon. It is a film about what it is to be a woman and so contains some fairly universal themes and, to be honest, whilst it is filmed in Beirut this is not a film about living with their local troubles as much as it is about living as a woman. Because of this it would not have surprised me to discover that the film had been set in France, Spain or London.

This is a story of ordinary women trying their best to deal with family, friends and their love lives. Layale spends much of the film waiting for calls from her married lover, whilst we as the audience look in at the policeman (Adel Karam) who is more than willing to commit to her. Labaki does not shy away from showing Layale the effects of her affair when her lover's wife becomes a client. Initially she treats her rival in a high handed manner until she does a home visit, seeing his wife and child throws her into a moral turmoil.

Within the confines of the salon the women offer each other comfort, support and love, in a very genuine way. Honesty and gentleness are the main things which you experience whilst watching this film. Okay, so it is a chick-flick, but there is much here in the story for the male of the species to enjoy - except of course that horrific thing they do with their legs.

Most of the stories deal with unrequited love, so the policeman loves Layale, who in turn has a married lover. Nisrine (Yasmine al-Masri) is about to be married and is hiding her lack of virginity from both her fiancée and his family. Jamale (Gisèle Aouad) is an aging actress chasing jobs she will never get and Rima (Joanna Moukarzel) is a lesbian who has fallen for one of her clients in a country where you can get arrested for just sitting in a car with your girlfriend.

One of the most touching stories is that of the seamstress Rose (Sihame Haddad) who has long since given up on finding love as she has to look after her mentally ill sister, though the possibility of love presents itself in the form of a distinguished looking elderly gentleman who keeps coming back to the shop to have his trousers shortened even when they have risen to a ludicrous length.

The confidence with which the film has been written and directed belies the fact that most of the cast are not professional actors and that this is Labaki's first film as a writer and director. I would imagine that we will be seeing a lot more of her in this role in the future.

The presentation of the disc does not reflect the final product, there were no extras and the audio was only Dolby 2.0. The film is visually very warm with a lot of oranges and browns which reflect back to the caramel of the title.

9

Charles Packer