Caramel, the first feature by director-writer (and star) Nadine Labaki, is a women's hang-out movie set in a beauty salon, where the three-member staff hash out their problems with each other and their customers, who have problems of their own to spread out on the table. What makes this warm, funny film notable is its cultural context: Labaki, who worked her way up through music videos and short films, is Lebanese, and her movie is set in Beirut, not a location that Western audiences associate with chick flicks. (Labaki completed shooting on the low-budget production in the summer of 2006, just nine days before Israel starting lobbing missiles into Lebanon.) In an interview with Filmmaker magazine, Labaki says that she wanted to make a movie that, by making Beirut seem like "a vibrant, happy, colorful place, in spite of everything", she could counter "that cliché of a country that is at war. That's it, that's all you know about Lebanon or Beirut, it's the only thing that you understand about this country. 'Oh, it's a place where there's war.' It's important that people know what kind of people we are and how we deal with everyday problems, and the nature of these people who are very warm-hearted, who have a good sense of humor, who have this strong will to live and who are very colorful, very warm."
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