The big-haired Baptists of Steel Magnolias would feel right at home at the Caramel beauty shop, where a gaggle of Beirut Christian women gather for girl-talk and commiseration about their messy lives. First-time director and star Nadine Labaki exhibits a steady hand and only a limited appetite for schmaltz (despite the candy-shop promise of the title) and takes a page from the Israeli filmmaking book in creating an atmosphere of forced calm where fragile things like love and change can bloom, despite a geography that's married to chaos.
Labaki's main energies are thrown into her own character's vignette, but charges of self-indulgence won't stick since; after all, she's the one with the absorbing almond eyes and all-around movie-star looks. The director plays Layale, a 30-ish single beautician on the downslope of a destructive affair with a married man, and mostly oblivious to (and annoyed by) the wooing of a smitten local traffic cop who finds every excuse to stop and interrogate her in the street. Her cohorts in the shop include Rima (Joanna Moukarzel), a woman of similar age who looks like a female Steve Zahn and seems unaware of her own lesbianism until a walk-in customer spins her head around, and Nisrine, (Yasmine Al Masri) younger, more excitable, and desperately unsure of how to break the news to her Muslim fiancé that he won't be her first. (Someone suggests she perpetrate a scam involving pigeon's blood on the bridal sheets.)
The realities of life in Beirut bleed into the frame here and there, such as when a tense moment between Rima and her customer-crush is mercifully interrupted by an abrupt power failure and during an embarrassing montage in which Layale must shop around to find a motel at which she can have a romp with her married boyfriend — she's rejected at most because she can't provide proof of marriage and must eventually settle on a fourth-rate fleapit with all manner of questionable stains in the bathroom. Their graceful, if frustrated acceptance of these Lebanese facts of life makes the characters seem of the place and not the tool of a director attempting a social commentary, which is refreshing.
The film's insistence on a multi-generational palette becomes something of a burden when the time devoted to the older characters nets few dramatic returns and much wheel-spinning. Aging actress Jamale (Gisele Aouad) is a shop regular who tags along on outings with the younger women; she seems consistently out of place and is gifted with few winning lines. Rose (Sihame Haddad), meanwhile, is an elderly seamstress who spies an opportunity for a late-life romance, but is hobbled by the constant-care requirements of her high-pitched, demented sister, Lili. Haddad's character isn't conceived or executed poorly — Labaki is certainly a competent helmer — but comes across as a touch too soapy for the demands of the story.
While Caramel may have little to offer to Western audiences, who need the minutiae of a familiar setting to let this film’s brand of bonding seep into the pores, it stands on its own as an example of solid genre craftsmanship. The penetrating musical score, with its memorable shadings of emotional danger, the snappy and confident pacing and the emergence of 33-year-old Labaki as an international talent to watch all combine to make the film satisfying confection.
