I went to see the film Caramel on Saturday. I quite like going to films on my own, although sobbing to Brokeback Mountain alone was pretty dismal and there was something that made me feel a little self-conscious and possibly like a pervy old man about sitting on my own amongst lots of pubescent girls to watch Josie and the Pussycats.
I hadn't seen any trailers and the posters of course promised it would be 'charming', but the more I think about it, the more uneasy the film made me. I did enjoy it in a lot of ways; Beirut was brought to life as a hot, dusty, sensuous city, jostling with people and cars, at times as vivid and carnivalesque (with the kitschy Roman Catholicism) as the Verona Beach of Romeo + Juliet. It was refreshing that it was set in a place known recently as 'war-torn' but with no sight of bullet-holes or destruction and only the occasional soldier. The action takes place in and around a ramshackle beauty salon where the generator frequently breaks down and women come in to have their hair and hearts fixed. In a lot of ways it was like Steel Magnolias, with a disparate group of women's separate stories followed, here to a rather meandering effect. There was an actress refusing to believe she was getting old, an aging woman whose romance is scuppered by her dementia-afflicted sister, a secretly blooming lesbian affair. There was a subtle investigation of the position of women in Lebanese society; one tries to book a hotel room and is frequently rebuffed because she cannot prove she has a husband, the female admirer of one of the beauticians cannot get her hair cut because her family would not approve. But it was the storyline of the woman who is soon to be married, but feels she must have her hymen sewn back up to 're-virginise' herself, that made me uncomfortable. It was dealt with in a humorous, lighthearted and 'all sisters in this together' way, that made the film not quite as sweet as its title suggested.
