{ London Film Fest 2011: Where Do We Go Now? }

[delga]

Where Do We Go Now? / Et maintenant, on va où?
Director: Nadine Labaki
Writers: Rodney Al Haddid, Thomas Bidegain, Jihad Hojeily, Nadine Labaki
Cast: Claude Baz Moussawbaa, Layla Hakim, Nadine Labaki
Yvonne Maalouf, Antoinette Noufaily, Anjo Rihane
Trailer

"You think we're just here to mourn you? [...] It's enough to make us lose our faith."

I heard about Nadine Labaki's first film, Caramel when it was first on limited release, but didn't see it until a couple of years ago when I saw it going cheap and bought it on a whim. It was this light, joyful creature of a film, about a group of women who know one another through a salon in Beirut. Caramel was a collection of love stories - of life stories, and the women who inhabited them.

It was a film created in Lebanon's peace time, and it shows; the film is abundant with people in the throes of life. But a week after shooting finished, war broke out in Lebanon again. Labaki, who could not fathom this return to unrest, realised that sooner or later she would have to confront the politics that have shaped the region. Where Do We Go Now? is her attempt to look at that conflict in a different way.

Villagers in remote Lebanon have managed to co-exist peacefully since the war, despite their religious differences, but even deep in the sand, news of the outside world eventually permeates, stirring tensions between the men of the village. The woman, who have mourned and buried husbands, brothers, and sons, do all that they can to keep the peace, distracting their men from incoming news by hiding newspapers, disconnecting radios, and destroying the village's one functioning television. As their efforts become increasingly futile, they go to ever more extreme lengths, eventually pooling their money and hiring a group of Russian dancers to stay with them in the village under the pretence that their tour bus has broken down. The women's grief spurs and unites them in surpassing their differences, and what results is a story of fortitude in the face of so much loss.

After the screening, Labaki spoke of how she was influenced by widows she had seen who grieved their loved ones to this day. Decked top-to-toe in black, their grief was incredibly ritualistic, almost violent in intensity, and it was this that resulted in the opening sequence of the film where the village women march in sequence to their cemetery to tend the graves of the men they have lost.

Don't get me wrong - the film is hilarious. Labaki has a touch for denoting human interaction, easily capturing the warmth between these women who squabble and support one another in their endeavours. There is a real sense of community in their interactions, and the good-natured hustling will be familiar to anyone who has grown up in an environment where women do regularly work together, lean on one another, and help each other to raise their children. Something I did not initially realise is that the majority of the cast had never acted before. Labaki and her team searched out characters amongst real people, casting them in the film. One of the more notable characters, Yvonne, the Mayor's wife who is known for having visions of the Virgin Mother - sometimes facetiously - was actually the wife of the priest in the village where the film was shot. Labaki said that she chose people you might know in the world - a mother, an aunt, the woman who serves you in the store every week - in order to make the film transcend the fiction which it inhabits. And yet Labaki is also aware that the reality is not so simple. Where Do We Go Now is about having a different perspective to the conflicts in Lebanon, and a memorial to those who suffer the sling and arrows years after they are shot.

I think this film is going to get a lot of attention this year, especially after its success at the Toronto Film Festival, so go to see it when you can, and take the time to watch Caramel, too. Both films are foreign language films, but please don't let that put you off. You will take more from them than they do from you, and in doing so will be rewarded with their warmth. Possibly my favourite of the films I've seen at the festival.