Bikini atoll

We’re often told that in the movie business nobody knows anything. But really, who in their right mind could have predicted that Caramel, a Lebanese chick-flick named after delapitory gunk, would become the international feelgood hit of 2008?

“That’s how we get rid of unwanted hair in the Middle East,” says the film’s writer, director and star, Nadine Labaki. “With a mixture of sugar, lemon juice and water that is boiled until it turns into caramel. It’s spread over marble to cool but it still always hurts.”
Like many classic women’s pictures, Caramel takes up residence in a beauty parlour where feminine problems are solved through nattering and bikini waxes. This all-girl hang-out is the only real refuge for a raggle taggle ensemble with various complaints. Our heroine, Layale (Labaki), is in love with a married man. Nisrine is Muslim and in desperate need of some intimate surgery so her fiance doesn’t discover she is no longer a virgin. Rima is a lesbian in a society that frowns on that sort of thing more than most. Jamale, a former actress, is refusing to grow old gracefully. Rose has curtailed all of life’s pleasure to take care of an elderly sister.
“As a woman I think you feel very safe in the hair and beauty salon,” says Labaki. “It’s the one place where, even though it’s very intimate, you are never judged. A woman who does hair removal sees us as naked as we can be. You can’t cheat, so by extension you open yourself up, talking about your life and your loves. When someone has seen you without hair on your body there’s no point in being coy.”
The film caused a stir domestically as the first Beirut set movie to skip over the war that raged there until 1990. For the 34 year-old Labaki, it was an important generational distinction to make. “I wanted to write about the future and not look back,” she tells me. “I wanted to capture something that is closer to our contemporary experiences than to war. In Lebanon, the past has been dissected to such a degree that I felt no need not to mention it.”
Sadly, one week after the end of shooting, Lebanon was back in the firing line.
“I had just started editing the film,” recalls Labaki. “And I felt just terrible. I had such a feeling of guilt. I wondered what was the point of this vibrant film about Beirut and women and love. It suddenly seemed so trivial. In the end, I decided that Caramel is a legitimate way of surviving the war and getting on with things.”
A year later and Labaki has earned a spot in Variety’s Top Ten Directors To Watch and has a global hit on her hands. Though she’s keen to stress that Caramel is more than a chick-flick, there can be little doubt that the film’s frank depiction of female sexuality in Lebanon has won plenty of fans.
“I haven’t summed up the whole of Lebanese society,” says the director. “But I made this film because I ask myself a lot of questions about Lebanese women. They’re obsessed with their appearance. They are trying to find an identity between the image of western women and that of oriental women. But we’re not western. The contradiction of Lebanon, as a woman, is that you don’t feel that you are deprived of your rights. But there is a lot of self-censorship and self-control. You are always scared of how people look at you and what people will think of you. You don’t see people on their own in Lebanon. Everybody belongs to a family or a religion or a community of some kind. You have to be careful.”
Then she laughs.
“Unless you’re having a bikini wax.”

Caramel is out now