Director, Screenplay: Ziad Doueiri
Arabic and French with English subtitles
Beirut, 13 April 1975. Bell bottoms are really hip, and our protagonist, Tarek is utterly hip. His best friend, Omar, is an aspiring filmmaker with his movie camera, resembling the small cameraman who follows Mel Gibson around in The Year of Living Dangerously. A new girl next door is to be the eye candy of the film and an obscure object of desire, yet important to the story because she is a Christian girl living in a bitterly fanatic Muslim community at the West side. This is an unusual tale of coming of age (among so many other coming of age films shown in SFF '99), where coming of age means learning to comprehend situation and politics and family problems, not just friendship, love and sex (see: Fucking Amal). While in most other coming of age films parents are taken for granted as either domestic dictators or slaves of enfant-terribles, here is shown how war tears families apart, not only physically, but also emotionally. In this on-the-edge place, religious fanaticism pushes ideology beyond logic, Paul Anka is satanic, and vulgar Arabic songs are biblically approved.
This is a very nice film with a personal insight to the religious politics of war in Lebanon as told by a filmmaker who grew up during the Lebanese Civil War; friendship, love obstructed by religious differences, friendship despite religious differences, an anti-sniper wonder bra (no, it doesn't make your breasts look any bigger, but it can save your life), and a notorious whorehouse that serves as a peace zone. West Beirut is a different perspective of war, told with humour and young spirit, but never over the top like Life is Beautiful. In spite of the soppy bit caused by narrative shift from Tarek to his parents (who are getting nostalgic and sentimental, although there is hardly any hope -- actually, some people really like this scene), the film is saved by the open ending that follows that scene. Like for Tarek and the people around him, the future becomes uncertain, and the joyful, peaceful past becomes precious, while the present is an open end.
natalia laban
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Other war films showing at SFF99:
Cold War Latvia in The Shoe
Russian soldiers fighting Chechnyans in Checkpoint
Shady government agencies battle it out in the Japanese anime Spriggan
return to Sydney Film Festival 1999 index