Nadine Labaki's film "Caramel"

I resisted seeing Caramel when it first came during our International Film Festival. I thought: "a beauty salon in Beirut, a bunch of scheming women bonding over leg waxing and kvetching about men? No thanks." But I was wrong to write this film off.

Nadine Labaki's beautiful film is a vision of a woman with a deep-felt love for people and life. The women in the film -all of them- are a refreshing departure from the plastic-sheened bobblehead bimbos for which Lebanon has unfortunately become best known in the past decade. These actresses and their characters are magnificent in their elegance, passion and weakness. You easily slip into their world, like a quiet spectator seated in a corner of their pink beauty salon, and are enraptured...

Labaki likewise possesses a sense for les moments de douceur de la vie and a sense of artistic restraint indicative of true talent. In her hands emotion and passion are subtly suggested -- and all the more titillating for it -- by a wisp of hair falling across another's face, a sun-lit silhouette, a wailing car honk.

You get a real sense that this film was created for insiders already versed in the realities of daily life in Lebanon; therefore there are no didactic segues into religious sectarianism, digressions on politics or any other snares of the spider's web in which a filmaker can get stuck when trying to explain their culture to a Western audience; for this, the film retains a natural rythm and commendably respects the intelligence of viewers, no matter their background, and their ability to understand the film's many layers of meaning.

Of course any good film needs strong, relatable characters. What could have been over-acted, stock dramatis personae in the hands of lesser actors become memorable performances with this cast. There's the Muslim fiancee whose husband won't be her first time; the jilted, bitter mistress waging a one-sided battle against her man's clueless wife; a washed-up housewife/former actress desperate to get back into the biz; the not-so subtley repressed lesbian who yearns for one of her clients and most touching of all, two elderly sisters, seamstress Rose and her deranged, trash-collecting, shrill-voiced but endlessly charming sister Lili. The men occupy more peripheral roles.

This isn't high cinema and the plot itself is pretty standard, but thanks to Labaki's strong directorial vision and the characters' melancholy charm, this film that's all about the "sweetness of life that burns" is never saccharine or cloying.