is quite an ambitious film.......... It's a bittersweet comedy drama about sectarian violence between Muslims and Christians in a rural Lebanese mountain village. It's star, writer and director,.(the statuesque
Nadine Labaki- who by the way made the delightful Caramel) tells the story from the point of view of the village women (from both religious factions) who band together with the increasing difficult objective of preventing the village men folk from descending into violence as a result of an increase of sectarian atrocities around the country, and the resulting farce ( which includes an unlikely arrival of six Russian strippers) is suitably amusing and conscience pricking in equal amounts.
There is a a couple of emotionally charged scenes from Labaki ( who plays the village cafe owner) some odd semi musical set pieces ( between her Christian character and a hunky Muslim painter (Julian Farhat) and plenty of not so subtle underlining that it is always the women in the conflicts of this world that have to deal with the fallout reality of violence and hatred
8/10I have not made the effort to go to the cinema for a while.... it's nice to get back in the swing so to speak