Is the chick flick an international phenomenon? While the traditional Hollywood rom-com doesn’t necessarily work in every country throughout the world, Lebanese director and actress Nadine Labaki has translated a straight-ahead girly movie formula to her modern Middle Eastern culture and has not only lived up to North American standards, but has by far exceeded them.
Caramel (the title is in reference to a body-waxing technique) focuses on five women who work in or frequent a Beirut beauty salon, and naturally, each of them has her own unique romantic problem. The central character is Layale (played by Labaki herself), a beautiful young woman who is selling herself short by carrying on with a married man who clearly has no intention of leaving his wife. The rest of the ensemble of characters includes Nisrine (Yasmine Al Masri), a bride-to-be who is trying to hide her lack of virginity from her intended husband; Rima (Joanna Moukarzel), who finds herself attracted to her female clients; Jamal (Gisele Aouad), an actress who goes to great lengths to conceal the fact that she’s entering middle age; and Rose (Sihame Hiddad), an older woman whose romantic life is held hostage by the mentally unstable sister to whom she plays caretaker.
The characters and their problems could easily be inserted into a big-budget (and likely, very syrupy and trite) American gyno-ensemble flick, but Labaki puts a spin on the film that transcends the kind of fluff that tends to dominate movies about women and their love lives. While there’s plenty of humour woven through the vignettes, there’s also a sensitivity and sadness. When Layale becomes obsessed with her lover’s wife and tries to infiltrate her life by becoming her esthetician, the results are subtly heartbreaking rather than hilariously humiliating. Neither the script nor the actors trivialize or diminish the characters’ feelings — their tribulations, no matter how silly some of them may seem, are treated with respect and dignity.
It turns out that, yes, the chick flick is a genre that can be translated into other languages and cultures. If anything, Caramel shows that North America can still learn a thing or two about how women can and should be portrayed on the big screen.
