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Caramel has been sold in more than 40 countries. The film opened at the Paris Cinema Film Festival, won three prizes at the San Sebastian International Film Festival in Spain and was screened at the Director’s Fortnight at Cannes and has won various Middle Eastern Film awards. Writer, director and actress Nadine Labaki speaks about her tale of a Beirut beauty salon and the relationship of five women in the film in an exclusive unedited interview with Sunil Doshi, director of NDTV Lumière, held on the 27th of January at the J.W. Marriott in Mumbai on the occasion of the “1st Rendezvous with French Cinema in India” .
Sunil Doshi: Nadine Labaki - Welcome to Bombay, India. Your film Caramel is part of the “Rendezvous with French Cinema” and is going to be released in India in the month of March.What was the starting point of making this film Caramel? What was the germ of an idea that prompted you to make this into a film?
Nadine Labaki: I have been thinking about this subject for a very long time because it began with something very personal. I am a Lebanese woman who is very modern in her appearance, I am somebody who works in a field that is not very easy for a woman. I have my opinion. I do anything I want, I travel…in appearance I am someone who is very free but at the same time for a woman who lives in Lebanon I have always felt the weight of tradition, education, religion...the family bonding that is very tight…so I’ve always felt a little bit confused. Who am I really? Am I this really modern woman who does everything the way she wants it or am I this more conservative more traditional woman? That’s how it started, so I started looking around me and I felt that all the women around me were feeling the same confusion, the same thing. That’s why I decided to write this film, it was sort of a therapy for me and that is way I decided to talk about women from different ages, different experiences, different religions…so that I could understand more what we are going through.
Sunil Doshi: For a first film, it couldn’t have been easy to direct and act at the same time. How did you separate the director from the actor in you while filming?
Nadine Labaki: No, it wasn’t easy. It was actually very hard to do it and it was a very hard decision to take, because at the same time I wanted to have a part in that film because I really wanted to fully express myself in that film and at the same time I was scared because it’s not easy to do both and I was scared that I would harm the film…it’s my first film and I know it’s a big weight on my shoulders. When I started the auditioning process for the other actors I had people who were in front of the camera for the first time and had no experience. It was easier for me to direct them by being in the scene with them and it created a strong bonding between us and a very good friendship and I could be closer to them, I could make them feel more comfortable. At first- because they were not experienced- they were scared of the camera. So I was their friend, I was not any more the director who is giving them instructions. That’s why I decided to just jump into the adventure and just do it.
Sunil Doshi: Or was it at a subconscious level, you wanting to be an actress and at the same time behind the camera, exactly the plight of Lebanese women today who is on the casp to face the western modernism trying to live in the traditional but so called extrovert way of living a life… so maybe it was your desire and ambition as well.
Nadine Labaki: Of course it has been always a desire, because I feel that - again because I am a woman who is living in the middle east- I’m always scared about how people perceive me, how people look at me. The way people look at you and judge you is a little bit hard. So sometimes, maybe, when you are in the skin of someone else it’s easier for you to express yourself because it’s the only place, when you’re an actor where it’s legitimate for you to be someone else. In real life I cannot be someone else everyday, I cannot experiment on my different natures. So acting for me is a place where I feel secure to explore things about myself because I’m scared to do this in my life.
Sunil Doshi: Or is it also that the political turmoil and the civil war in your part of the world also prompted you to escape into the world of cinema and let you become a filmmaker as well as an actress?
Nadine Labaki: Absolutely, it’s something that began when I was a kid. I was most of the time at home because of the war. We couldn’t go out, we couldn’t go and play and there was no school. The only escape was the TV set. I used to live my life through this TV set…all these different worlds. When I understood that for me to create these worlds that were different from my own world and my own reality, that is when I decided to become a director, a filmmaker. I decided to dream about the day when I would make my first film. That’s how it all started.
Sunil Doshi: Though it’s your first film one sees a lot of influences of your advertising work, your music video clips that you used to make, the kind of light, warmth, the coziness, and the beauty salon, some of the pictures of L’Oreal into this, I think your advertising background helped you to conjure a very utopian world in this beauty salon where a woman could express herself without any taboo and be ambitious at the same time.
Nadine Labaki: Advertising and Music videos allowed me to experiment a lot. I’ve always had this dream of making a film but I was not mature enough , I didn’t have the experience., so for me advertising and music videos were a field of experimentation for me. It’s true, I‘ve worked a lot on the image of the Arab women in these small experiments. I started to create these examples of women that were very free, who were at easy with their movements, with their bodies. Of course any women would like to imitate and look like them. I created role models for myself also. I experimented a lot on that and the beauty salon is a place where women feel very comfortable because there is a lot of hope, they think they’re going to come out of it , feeling more beautiful , so more happy and I’ve always been fascinated with the relationship that happens with the women that makes you more beautiful. She becomes very important in your life because she advises you, she tells you what to do, she sees you with your flaws, your nudity, your real self. So there is no mask, you just be yourself with her and you start telling her your stories, your life. I always found this relationship very fascinating. The divan where you sit becomes like a divan of a psychiatrist. That is why I decided to let the story be in a beauty institute.
Sunil Doshi: Would you say that this film could be about women, love, friendship, freedom and the choices?
Nadine Labaki: Of course these are some of the subjects that are in the film also but it’s not only that. It’s about their fight, their battle to be who they really want to be. There is a contradiction between what we really want to be and who we really are because we are scared to be what we really want to be, because we are very connected to our families, we’re scared to disappoint them, we’re scared to do something wrong and earlier I mentioned this feeling of guilt and remorse that is always with us. This is something that we need to fight to become really free.
Sunil Doshi: You have a very interesting title called “Caramel” because the name and the setting itself suggest everything in a manner of speaking, the story unfolds. Could you tell us what Caramel and the metaphor Caramel means to this film.
Nadine Labaki: Caramel is inspired by the waxing paste that we use in Lebanon. It’s a mixture of lemon, sugar and water that we boil until it becomes this paste. We use it for waxing but of course before using it we can’t help but taste it. It’s very tasty, it’s Caramel. It’s this idea of sugar that burns and hurts you. This idea of bittersweet. Something that is sweet, that hurts you while you’re taking unwanted things off from yourself. For me it is a secret ritual that women do away from men because it’s something that men are not supposed to see. It’s an excuse for them to gather and tell their stories, so it becomes like a witness of their stories and their lives and their secrets.
Sunil Doshi: There is one interesting aspect in your film, which is that most of the characters are wanting to steel happiness. Whether it is a policeman who stops you with your seat belt not on you, whether it is about Rose who wants to spend some interesting moments with Charles or whether it is about Lilly who is always looking for the letters which never come to her or it could be about Jamal who has a great ambition to become an actress and that’s why she comes to the beauty salon. Are you trying to conjure up a very utopian world in your beauty salon and why the stealing of happiness all the time?
Nadine Labaki: The stealing of happiness, because you are scared to be hurting someone if you want to live them or you are even scared to hurt yourself to live them . That’s why you always steal your moments of happiness because you either lie or live a parallel life or like Layale in the film who’s in love with a married man and at the same time she lives with her parents and you feel that she is stealing those moments when she wants to talk to him on the phone, when she wants to see him or wants to meet him under the bridge. This happiness is something forbidden to them, that is why they are stealing those moments.
Sunil Doshi: One fascinating thing about Caramel is the important characterization that you have done. There are just five or six of them. Would you like to tell us something about the attention and the care with which you chose these characters from because that itself is a very interesting part of the film.
Nadine Labaki: I decided to work with real people because I think there is some much beauty in real life and in real people. They deserve to be on the big screen, their story deserve to be told and their personality deserve to be shown. That is the reason why I chose to work with real people, not actors. I wanted to give you, as an audience, the impression that you are observing other peoples who look like you and act like you and talk like you. This way you can identify yourself much better with them and you don’t have the feeling that you’re watching a fiction with an actor who is being someone for this film and who becomes someone else for another film. I’m experimenting with reality. It was a very, very long process. I had been working with five, six people who were helping me on this process. We were looking everywhere: public places , restaurants, in our families our friends, we even put ads in the papers and people just came randomly . It was a very long process, it took more than a year to find these people.
Sunil Doshi: Let’s visit some of the characters in the film. Let’s say Layale, a Christian woman who is around thirty, looking for a man. Tell us something about Layale because her character kicks off the film in the beginning unfolding the lives of these women.
Nadine Labaki: Layale is a women who is in love with a married man, so she’s doing something forbidden and at the same time she is someone who is not married and still living with her parents like many , many women in Lebanon. She is over 30 but still living with them, because in Lebanon you don’t leave your parents house until you’re married. This woman represents many Lebanese women who are torn between what they really want to live and what they allow themselves to live. She loves her parents, does not want to hurt them, she’s also very religious- you see the cross that she’s wearing.
Sunil Doshi: Is virginity a big issue in Lebanon?
Nadine Labaki: Yes, it still is a big issue. Virginity is an issue in many, many places in Lebanon. It’s not only an issue for Muslim people it is also an issue for Christians.
Sunil Doshi: So, is it very common that women go for hymen stitching before marriage?
Nadine Labaki: Yes, that is something done very often, unfortunately.
Sunil Doshi: Rima, as a kind of a tomboyish character who is engaged with this mysterious, beautiful women. She has no name she represents the outside world. Tell us something about Rima aswell.
Nadine Labaki: Rima also represents a lot of women not very comfortable with who they are. Rima has the tendency to love other women and at the same time she’s scared of this tendency, she’s scared of what she feels and this is an example that you see around you in Lebanon. People-men and women- are not comfortable with that and are scared to say it out loud. The relationship that you see in the film always happens in silence. Nobody talks about it, it’s all understood and this is the way many people in Lebanon live.. It’s not an easy situation and that is why I wanted to talk about it in the film.
Sunil Doshi: Then there is Jamal who thinks that life is a show and she always wanted to be younger than she was. Do you have such a microcosm of woman presence in the Lebanese society today?
Nadine Labaki: This is something that we see all over the world, this fear of getting old. And this battle to fight and gain time. It is something that you see everywhere in the world. Unfortunately in Lebanon women go to extremes because we see this example of the modern woman and we want to look like her and imitate her and sometimes we go overboard. So Jamal is one of these people, in her fight against age she goes over the board.
NDTV Lumière: External appearance, power of seduction with respect to Lebanese women one finds it much higher because of their complex, their remorse and their guilt and the repressive society that they live in. What are the reasons for that?
Nadine Labaki: It is something that I have always asked myself. I think it is because we are confused, we are looking for our identity, we don’t really know yet what the right dosage, the right balance is and I think that we’re going to somehow find the right balance between east and west . It is something that you have here in India too. You also are torn between this modern way of life and at the same time your own traditions that are beautiful and I think you and us are blessed to have these two cultures in our country. What we need to do know is find the right balance between both and it would make us really rich people.
Sunil Doshi: I find the character of Rose who is your neighbour, who lives next to the Salon and who is in love with this man Charles very interesting and very self sacrificing and self censoring saying :” Look, I’m 65 I cannot fall in love again..” Is age still a taboo in the society?
Nadine Labaki: Yes, I heard so many stories about women who are wanting to make their life again or fall in love again at an age that is not very usual and I’ve seen people criticizing this situation in a very ironic way and I‘ve always felt very frustrated about that . It’s as if we are asking her to kill a part of herself that exists. Why is it not allowed to fall in love again to get married again. Why do we criticize women who become older and want to fall in love? That is why I wanted to write about this. It is something that exists, not only in our culture. Everywhere. It is being looked at in a very ironic way.
Sunil Doshi: And her sister Lilly. I think she is one of the most important characters of this film. Tell us something about Lilly and the background of this character.
Nadine Labaki: Lilly is always collecting papers in the street and you feel that is has something to do with a love story. She thinks that she’s going to find a letter of her fiancé/lover. She is inspired by a real person that exists and I’ve always seen her in my neighbourhood and she collects papers exactly the way Lilly does in the film. So one day I asked her “Why” and one of the versions that people tell me is that when she was young she fell in love with a French officer during World War II. He left but he kept sending her letters. They were very much in love, they were about to get married or so . Her family, and for me again it is somehow society, opposed to this relationship and they hid the letters from her. When she found out about this she started looking for the letters in every paper she can find and now she’s 85 and her back is bent because of that and she is still looking for the letter of her lover. That hit me and even though she seems crazy in the film she is the wisest of all because she hasn’t given up on love. That is why I decided to write that story and put it in the film.
Sunil Doshi: Is Nadine Labaki the new face of feminists in Lebanon?
Nadine Labaki: I don’t know, I don’t consider myself as a feminist. I just say things the way I feel them and I hope it will make people think about a few subjects that we really need to think about. I’m not claiming that I will change the world but if my film or my way of thinking would make some people think about a few things I’d be a very happy women.
Sunil Doshi: Men in your film have been shown quite secondary. Whether it is the police man, you don’t hear him whenever he asks you to put on your seatbelt. Charles who is ignored and neglected by Rose. The man that Layale is in love with is never even shown, the only idea that conjures up in your mind is his honking of his car throughout. Was it a very conscious decision to do that?
Nadine Labaki: In this film I chose to talk about women. That is why you physically you don’t see men a lot but everything evolves around the men. The man is always present but I didn’t feel the need to make them visible physically. All these men except the lover that you don’t see.. in fact I didn’t want you to see him because I wanted you to feel the same frustration that she is feeling. She doesn’t see that man. He is the forbidden relationship, he’s like a ghost that you can’t grab. The other man I for me they are my fantasy of the ideal man because they are all very strong but also very sensitive, not scared to show their fragile side. This police man, when he enters the Beauty salon, he just decides that he’s going to let go of his powers. He’s not scared to go into this place where he knows he’s going to be powerless and be dominated by women. He does this out of love, he’s not scared of that. I think, this is my vision of ideal men.
Sunil Doshi: Looking through women to tell us the story of Caramel, it was also written with the help of two men. Why this contradiction?
Nadine Labaki: I wrote this story with these two men simply because I get along with these two men, we are on the same wavelength. They have a lot of sensitivity towards women, they understand women, they respect women , they know. They know what they are going through, so I chose to work with these two men.
Sunil Doshi: Music plays a very important part. Khaled Mouzannar, who is your husband. What was the brief to Khaled when he composed the music.
Nadine Labaki: You know, I didn’t need to brief Khaled about anything. He just came into my life when I was writing the film. He was there all the while when the birth of this dream started. He was around me all the time and he knew me and he knew what made me dream, what made me feel. He started working on the script before we started shooting. He used to imagine things because he knew me so well and really when I heard the music for the first time I started crying because it was something that was so obvious. It was amazing how he understood me, the film, everything.
Sunil Doshi: Would you say that in the current socio-political context Lebanese is still puritanical and also very orthodox and is still living in the past?
Nadine Labaki: It depends on the social milieu, there is no black and white. We are all confused, man and women, still looking for the right identity, the right balance.
Sunil Doshi: Do you live in the contradiction of what you are, what you live in and what you are allowed to live in?
Nadine Labaki: Of course, I do live in this contradiction. I would do so many different things if I was not scared. I have these visions of myself and I don’t allow myself to experiment because I don’t want to hurt anyone around me. I don’t want to hurt my family, I don’t want to hurt this idea that they have in their heads of me.
Sunil Doshi: So would you say that these contradictions are your strengths currently?
Nadine Labaki: Maybe. I hope.
Sunil Doshi: How was the film received in Lebanon and other parts of the Arabic world?
Nadine Labaki: It was very well received even though I was scared that it would create a dilemma because I’m talking about very delicate subjects and it was amazing how people reacted very positively to this film. I think it is because I’m not provoking anyone in the film, I’m not shocking anyone. The things that I’m saying, I ‘m saying them with a lot of softness because I don’t think we can get anywhere by provoking or shocking. It will only create a wall between you and the people you are talking to . It’s also humor that you can get away with anything.
Sunil Doshi: What was the critic of the film throughout, do you have any incident in mind or any writings that affected you?
Nadine Labaki: Not at all. It was very, very, very positive.
Sunil Doshi: And the Director’s Fortnight section at Cannes made the film to be of international stature, it really helped you. You know that Caramel will release in India in the coming months. What are your expectations from India? Do you see a lot of similarities of a cultural context of the film? Would you like to say something to our audience about the film?
Nadine Labaki: I think that Indian people are going to find a connection with this culture. I think we live in the same dilemma. You are also maybe trying to find this right balance between east and west, between your tradition and this modern image. That is why I think that people will identify themselves with this film and I’m really excited to be here. This is a country that has made me dream for so long. I have been dreaming to come here. It’s even more amazing for me to come here with a film, with something from my country. I hope people are going to like it and identify with it.
Sunil Doshi: Are you working on your next project already?
Nadine Labaki: I’m going to start writing again in April hopefully, if everything goes well.
Sunil Doshi: Nadine Labaki, thank you very much for this interview. Wish you all the best and success.
