Toronto International Film Festival

‘Boys in the Trees’ Is the Best Movie You Might Not See Next Year

The first feature film from Nicholas Verso, ‘Boys in the Trees’ is a coming-of-age story focused on questions of masculinity and wrapped in a delightful – and visually stunning – cloak of Halloween. …They explore what it means that their friendship fell apart – what childhood loses to adolescence, what adolescence loses to adulthood, what we gain in either case, and what we give away when we stop hoping that something amazing could happen to us.

Written by Katherine Murray.

By the time I walked into my screening of Boys in the Trees, it had a little frowny face beside it in the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) mobile app, and there was a “buy one, get one” sale on tickets. Since premiering at Venice earlier this month, the film hasn’t received more than a handful of mixed reviews. While it’s slated to hit Australian theatres in time for Halloween, I haven’t been able to find any news about distribution in North America. This is very disappointing, because Boys in the Trees is one of the best films I’ve seen in recent years, and I left the theatre wanting to share it with everyone.

The first feature film from Nicholas Verso, Boys in the Trees is a coming-of-age story focused on questions of masculinity and wrapped in a delightful – and visually stunning – cloak of Halloween. I was in love with every part of it, right from the start – the details in the costuming, the weirdly specific soundtrack (which Verso explained was built out of songs that had personal meaning for him), the charismatic performances from its young actors, the incredibly vivid colors in a movie set almost completely at night. Mostly, though, I loved the dark emotional palette the story draws from, and its fearlessness in letting itself and its teenage characters be uncool enough to care about things.

The story takes place in a stylized, hyper-real version of 1997, in which a bully and his victim go on a supernatural adventure together on Halloween night. Corey (Toby Wallace), the bully, is also the film’s protagonist, trying to figure out whether following his dreams is worth exposing himself to scorn and ridicule. Jonah (Gulliver McGrath), the victim, used to be Corey’s best friend, before Corey started trying so hard to fit in. Over the course of a night, they explore what it means that their friendship fell apart – what childhood loses to adolescence, what adolescence loses to adulthood, what we gain in either case, and what we give away when we stop hoping that something amazing could happen to us.

The film’s greatest trick is that there’s a false ending roughly 80 minutes in, in which it seems like Corey’s learned everything he needed to learn and wrapped all of his problems up neatly… only to discover that there’s still half an hour in this movie, nothing is as simple as it seems, and sometimes you can’t take back what you’ve done.

At the screening, Verso explained that he’s received mixed reactions from men watching the film. Some hate it passionately, and others told him it’s precious to them because of how it reflects their experiences. In exploring masculinity, Boys in the Trees brushes against sexism, homophobia, latent homosexuality, aggression, vulnerability, kindness, friendship, and strength at various times without seeming like a Public Service Announcement. It’s a story about bullying that isn’t as simple as saying, “Bullies are horrible people,” and a story about friendship that isn’t as simple as saying, “Your friends are the people you always get along with.” The film takes a more layered view of what people can be to each other – what boys can be to each other – and how relationships can change from moment to moment.

Verso’s view of Halloween is also – except for one jump scare – less rooted in terror than in carnival – the idea that there’s one night a year where the regular rules are suspended; when the veils between worlds, both real and imagined, become permeable, and people can cross over. This is the most delicious form of Halloween, and it’s on full display from beginning to end.

The only weakness worth mentioning is a subplot in which Corey earns a girlfriend almost completely at random. This plot line has no relationship to anything else in the movie, slows down the action in confusing ways whenever it appears, and seems to happen just because it’s expected. The girl, Romany (Mitzi Ruhlmann), seems pretty cool, but is also made to speak for her entire gender at various points, and literally only ever appears so that she can be a good influence on Corey. Since Jonah’s already a good influence on Corey and more integral to the plot, it’s not clear what Romany’s adding besides proof of Corey’s heterosexuality.

That’s important, because the much more interesting relationship in the film exists between Corey and the leader of his little gang, Jango (Justin Holborow). Jango’s an asshole, but he also values his friendship with Corey, who draws out a gentler side of his personality. Justin Holborow’s performance captures the sense of someone whose entire demeanor can change depending on whether or not he sees the people before him as human, and there are homoerotic undertones to the frustrated sense of ownership he displays toward Corey. It’s not that Boys in the Trees needs to be an LGBTQ movie in order to tell a good story – it’s just that the film seems a lot more interested in the boys’ relationship than it does in Romany, and it might have been nice if the story had leaned into it more.

Even with the extraneous heterosexual romance running interference, Boys in the Trees still presents a remarkably strong sense of voice, and displays the same strength of its characters in daring to leave itself vulnerable through nerdy acts of caring. Verso took risks with this story and poured himself into it rather than holding back, and that’s something I’d always choose to watch over a perfectly executed, perfectly ordinary film.

Boys in the Trees may or may not ever come to a theatre near you, but, hopefully, we can all stream it online one day.

Katherine Murray is a Toronto-based writer who yells about movies, TV and video games on her blog.

Beware the Sexist Celluloid Quilt that Is ‘Nocturnal Animals’

…I’m left with the feeling that Tom Ford’s second feature film is a love letter to sexist movies instead. … Like a lot of sexist stories, ‘Nocturnal Animals’ is vague about its attitude toward women, because it doesn’t truly regard women as anything but objects – things that derive meaning only through their relationship to the real subjects, men.

Written by Katherine Murray.

[Trigger warning: discussion of rape and murder]

The most generous interpretation of Nocturnal Animals is that it mimics the conventions of sexist storytelling in order to criticize them. If that’s the case, the criticism is buried too deep for me to see it and I’m left with the feeling that Tom Ford’s second feature film is a love letter to sexist movies instead.

The film uses a complicated, non-linear, story-within-a-story structure to mask the simplicity of its content. Susan (Amy Adams) is a wealthy gallery director who divorced Edward (Jake Gyllenhaal) after a two-year marriage. About twenty years later, Edward sends Susan a galley of his new novel – the novel she didn’t believe he would ever manage to write – along with an invitation to meet when he’s in her city. Susan, who’s miserable with every aspect of her life since leaving Edward, is captivated by his story and experiences many emotions as she thinks about it on the couch – and in the shower, and walking up a spiral staircase at work, and standing in front of a painting of the word “Revenge,” and in other picturesque locations. Because it’s completely impossible that Susan could be happy that things have turned out well for Edward at the same time believing it was best to end their marriage, she decides she wants him back. It’s a plot line that marries the style and score of sexy Michael Douglas-era thrillers to the plot of an Avril Lavigne song (he was a sk8er boi / she said, “see you l8er, boi” / now she regrets all of her life decisions because he achieved something after they grew up). The complication is that Susan did something unspeakably horrible to Edward when they broke up – so unspeakable that we don’t learn what it was until late in the film, at which point it doesn’t really live up to the hype.

The film’s second narrative is a dramatization of the novel that Edward wrote, in which Gyllenhaal plays the lead character, Tony, and other Amy Adams-looking actresses with long red hair play the roles of Tony’s wife and daughter. Tony’s family heads out on vacation when they’re run off the road by three rednecks – I say “redneck” not because I think that’s a nice word to use, but because these are the same stock characters from every horror movie in this genre (think Straw Dogs, The Last House on the Left, The Hills Have Eyes, Deliverance). There’s a long, tense sequence where the villains try to trick Tony into unlocking the doors to his car, except this scene is hindered by the fact that their ruse isn’t very convincing. The situation ultimately ends with Tony’s wife and daughter (who are referred to exclusively as “my wife,” “my daughter,” “your folks,” or “your women” from this point on) kidnapped, raped, and murdered while Tony survives. Tony teams up with a hard-bitten detective, who plays by his own rules, and plots to get revenge on the three men who ruined his life.

The opening credit sequence – which is a throwback in itself, both because it exists and seems to go on forever – features slow motion footage of plus size women and elderly women dancing burlesque to the tune of a sinister soundtrack. As I write this, I still have no idea why. I also don’t know why the men who murder Tony’s wife and daughter carefully arrange their dead and surprisingly unmarked bodies into a beautiful, vaguely suggestive pose on top of a bright red couch on the edge of their property, almost like they know Tom Ford’s going to take a picture of it. I don’t know why the kidnapping, rape, and murder of two women is only ever presented as a thing that happened to Tony. I don’t know why Susan can’t send a text message when she’s meeting someone at a restaurant. I don’t know why wearing dark red lipstick makes her a different person than she wants to be. I don’t know why Tony doesn’t listen to his wife when she warns him not to get out of the car. I don’t know why what Susan did to Edward is supposed to be as bad as anything any of the characters do in his novel. I don’t know why Susan wants to get back together with Edward. After being subjected to Edward’s great, amazing novel, I wished more than anything that I could divorce him.

Like a lot of sexist stories, Nocturnal Animals is vague about its attitude toward women, because it doesn’t truly regard women as anything but objects – things that derive meaning only through their relationship to the real subjects, men. Susan only matters in so far as she’s the focal point of Edward’s rage, and in so far as he’s able to corral her toward sharing his point of view – that he was great and their relationship was wonderful until she ruined it by doing something evil. Almost 100% of the time she’s on-screen, Susan thinks about Edward, feels emotions about Edward, and remembers Edward. All of the expressions on her face, all of her beautiful poses, everything she does and says – somehow, in some way, it’s all about Edward. He isn’t even there, and he’s still the entire focus of what is supposedly Susan’s story.

The women in Edward’s great, amazing novel fare even worse. A fridge is a fridge no matter what your production values are, and Tony’s wife and daughter are alive for one scene before taking a trip to the fridge so that we’ll understand why Tony feels bad. Then they are literally posed as objects to be viewed because: content imitating form.

There are signs that the film is aware of the way it objectifies women – for example, the burlesque dancers from the opening credits also become objects when they lie on slabs in the gallery, which seems a little on the nose. But creating art with awareness is not the same as executing it with purpose; there isn’t anything in the film that suggests its sexism serves any greater purpose than following the conventions of other sexist films.

Nocturnal Animals is set for limited release this November, and will probably be nominated for awards.

Katherine Murray is a Toronto-based writer who yells about movies, TV and video games on her blog.

Who Controls the ‘ARQ’ in the Time Travel Sci-Fi Thriller?

The characters are thrown into an adrenaline-fueled, confusing, science-fiction quest from scene one. They don’t have time to make anything more than impulsive decisions, there’s a plot twist every time they think they know what’s going on, and every double-cross turns out to be a double-double-double cross instead. The story doesn’t always make sense, but it’s a wild ride that holds your interest from beginning to end.

Written by Katherine Murray.

ARQ, Tony Elliott’s new Netflix movie, delivers about what you’d expect from a writer for Orphan Black. The characters are thrown into an adrenaline-fueled, confusing, science-fiction quest from scene one. They don’t have time to make anything more than impulsive decisions, there’s a plot twist every time they think they know what’s going on, and every double-cross turns out to be a double-double-double cross instead. The story doesn’t always make sense, but it’s a wild ride that holds your interest from beginning to end.

The protagonist is a man named Renton (Robbie Amell) who invented a powerful generator called the ARQ (pronounced “ark”). There’s a fragmented back story about how he stole the ARQ from the evil corporation he used to work for, in a dystopian future where power and food are both hard to come by. The ARQ could be the difference between winning and losing a war between the corporation and a rebel army called the Block, but Renton’s concerned about some anomalous readings it’s giving off. Just as Renton’s house is stormed by Block members who want to steal the ARQ, the ARQ creates a three-hour time loop, trapping Renton and his attackers inside. Renton is the only one who remembers what happened in previous loops; he needs to figure out how to survive, protect the ARQ, and reconcile with his mysterious, newly-returned partner, Hannah (Rachael Taylor).

I have some questions about how the time loop works in ARQ, which I won’t ask here, because they would spoil some of the surprises in the latter half of the film, but, suffice to say, the rules get more complicated as they go, and the complications don’t always make sense.

What I do need to spoil a little bit is Renton’s relationship with Hannah, because the way it plays out isn’t especially thoughtful. At the start of the film, Hannah’s sleeping beside him, just before the Block bursts in, and we later learn that she tracked him down only the night before, after a long absence that began when she was arrested by the corporation. She has an agenda of her own that’s revealed as the movie goes on. But she’s mostly an ally to Renton and – to be completely frank about it – something else he has to carry through this situation, so that it isn’t too easy for him.

Early in the film, Renton is the only one who remembers the time loops and he literally leads Hannah through the house by the hand to evade the Block – this pretty much makes sense, because he knows what’s around each corner and she doesn’t. Later in the film, Hannah starts to remember the time loops as well but, for some reason, this doesn’t change the dynamic where she follows his lead on every single decision – even when they have contradictory goals. On the one hand, Renton is the best chance she has of ending the time loop and anything she does will be for nothing as long as the day keeps resetting, so it makes sense to cooperate with him. On the other hand, Hannah’s primary function in the story is to be an extra person that can die, thereby preventing Renton from stopping the time loop, because he wants to find a solution where both of them live.

It’s a little bit reminiscent of Edge of Tomorrow, except that Emily Blunt’s character was a lot more active in that movie, and the writers got mileage out of the idea that the one person who could remember what was happening was also least suited to do anything about it. In ARQ, it seems like Renton would be better off on his own and Hannah exists to be an extra obstacle that slows him down.

There’s also a love triangle in the story that’s more of a line with a dot beside it. Or a symbol like x_x. In the time Hannah’s been away from Renton, she’s changed a lot, due to some rough experiences, and fallen in love with someone else. That person, happily, is also trapped in the time loop and keeps getting killed. After the first time it happens, Hannah hardly bats an eye at that or at the idea that she and Renton should end the time loop anyway, as long as they both survive. Taken to its natural extreme, this could have been an interesting idea – if Renton keeps resetting the loop because he loves Hannah, and Hannah loves this other person, and this other person loves someone else… on and on until he has to find three hours where nobody in the entire world dies. Unfortunately, the story has a laser focus on what Renton wants, and Renton only wants Hannah to survive. It’s actually better for him if her partner doesn’t make it.

ARQ isn’t a bad movie, and it fits within the Netflix wheelhouse in that it’s so addictive you won’t want to stop once you’ve started. It does suffer from the same kind of emptiness beneath Orphan Black. Once you strip out all the plot twists, there isn’t much of a message underneath and the characters mostly seem motivated to make the story work. The film also doesn’t seem like it reflects on the situation very much, beyond trying to build a framework for more double-crosses and plot twists.

Still, if you’re hungry for more Orphan Black, because you miss feeling confused and enthralled, ARQ is worth checking out.

Katherine Murray is a Toronto-based writer who yells about movies, TV and video games on her blog.

‘Colossal’ and ‘Lady Macbeth’ Tell Similar Stories of Violence and Empowerment at TIFF

Both Nacho Vigalondo’s monster movie, ‘Colossal,’ and William Oldroyd’s period piece, ‘Lady Macbeth,’ are solid, carefully-made films built around a stunning performance from their lead actors – Anne Hathaway and Florence Pugh, respectively – and both tell the story of a woman surrounded by men who try to control her. Rightly or wrongly, both films also seem to presume that the best way for women to be strong and empowered is through physical violence.

Written by Katherine Murray.

Last week, the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) saw the world premieres of Nacho Vigalondo’s monster movie, Colossal, and William Oldroyd’s period piece, Lady Macbeth. Both of these are solid, carefully-made films built around a stunning performance from their lead actors – Anne Hathaway and Florence Pugh, respectively – and both tell the story of a woman surrounded by men who try to control her. Rightly or wrongly, both films also seem to presume that the best way for women to be strong and empowered is through physical violence.

In Colossal, Gloria (Anne Hathaway) struggles with problematic drinking, got fired from her job, and kicked out of her boyfriend’s apartment. She moves back to her home town to get her life together, but soon discovers that she’s psychically linked to a monster that appears in South Korea every morning to blindly stumble into skyscrapers, leaving a trail of chaos and destruction in its wake. This sounds like a completely bizarre and preposterous premise, but it works really well in the film. At first, it seems that Gloria will have to pull back on her drinking and behave in a more responsible way to deal with the monster, but it slowly becomes clear that there’s another antagonist in this story. At the risk of revealing one of the best twists in the film, it turns out that Gloria’s nice guy childhood friend, who initially seems destined to be her romantic interest, is actually a Nice Guy childhood friend – in that he secretly hates and fears women, and only pretends to be friends with them because he’s angling for sex. The second half of the film is about him getting increasingly vile and misogynist while she struggles to stand up to him.

At the screening I attended, Vigalondo explained that he’d been editing the film right up until the premiere and joked that all he could see were the mistakes he made. However, the mistakes don’t really show. There’s a little bit of fuzzy logic about the monster, and its origin story is built up to be more than it is but, overall, the film seems technically well-made and takes us on an understandable and unexpected emotional journey. The degree to which you enjoy this movie will be mediated by your Matrix quotient – meaning, if you were annoyed that Neo and Trinity killed a bunch of innocent people so they could look cool in The Matrix, you will be annoyed that Anne Hathaway’s monster kills a bunch of innocent people by drunkenly stumbling into a skyscraper. Colossal makes more of these deaths than The Matrix did, but not as much as it makes of the pain Gloria suffers herself.

That said, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed Colossal and, even though I’m about to question the film’s use of violence as a path to power, this is a movie that deserves to land a distributor, so as many people can watch it as possible. There are interesting conversations to be had about the film, once it’s part of the cultural landscape.

Lady Macbeth is complicated, in that it’s an adaptation of an opera that was an adaptation of a Russian novel called Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, which does not, itself, have anything to do with Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Set in England, in the 1860s, the film follows Katherine (Florence Pugh), a woman who marries into a modestly wealthy family that hates her. The first act of the film depicts Katherine’s life as an endurance test – physical discomfort, humiliation, isolation, boredom, sleep deprivation, celibacy – that will apparently go on forever. By the time the murders start – and there are lots of murders in this film – we’re on her side.

This is Oldroyd’s first feature film (written by Alice Birch), after working mostly in theatre and, although everything looks gorgeous, there’s an overall broadness to the movie that would work better on-stage. All of the physical violence in the film is blocked and shot in ways that reveal it as pantomime; every line of dialogue and sound effect is crisp and loud as though there’s a chance we might not hear it.

Katherine intentionally goes from being sympathetic to villainous over the course of the film, and there are unanswered questions about some events – including what looks like a possible gang rape. The best explanation for the story came from Naomi Ackie, the actor who plays Katherine’s servant, Anna. During a Q&A, Ackie explained that to her, Lady Macbeth is about the choices people have when they’re oppressed, and how intersectionality leaves each of the characters with different options. The option Katherine chooses is to kill anyone who threatens her freedom and – without giving away too much – Gloria eventually resorts to violence in Colossal, too.

On the one hand, it feels great to watch these women fight back against men who threaten violence or have used physical violence to make them subservient – I got really emotional watching Colossal, and appreciated the care Vigalondo took developing the situation and exploring the misogynist undercurrents in what initially appears to be harmless behavior. There’s also a great moment in Lady Macbeth where Katherine stares at her father-in-law impassively during an outburst, and you can tell it’s because she’s already planned his death – it’s a much-welcome change after watching her bow to his wishes earlier in the film. On the other hand, watching these women meet violence with violence reinforces the idea that the best or only way to have power is to beat or kill someone else, which is an idea that’s bad for women (and many men) in the long run.

Men’s domination of women has historically hinged on physical strength and threats or deeds of violence. Although both Colossal and Lady Macbeth seem to propose that the best way for women to end their oppression is also through violence, the biggest gains women have made collectively in society didn’t happen because we started to beat men up – they followed from cultural change that placed more value on freedom, democracy, and equality. Some may argue that it’s important for women to learn to physically defend themselves, but the best way for us to ensure that women are treated like people rather than property is through dismantling intersecting systems of oppression and claiming an equal share of political, economic, and social power. Until we have that, women’s rights are an experiment that men can end at any time.

As committed to empowering women as both of these movies are – and I don’t doubt their commitment – the road to power on-screen looks a lot different than the road to power we’ve taken and probably should continue to take in life.

Katherine Murray is a Toronto-based writer who yells about movies, TV, and video games on her blog.

Guest Writer Wednesday: Where Do We Go Now?

Arabic movie poster for Where Do We Go Now?

This is a guest post by Kyna Morgan.

Nadine Labaki is a pretty big deal. Following up her directorial debut, the 2007 film Caramel (which she also wrote and starred in), she brought her sophomore directorial effort, Where Do We Go Now? back to the Toronto International Film Festival as co-writer, producer, director and star. I was lucky enough to snag tickets to a 9:45AM showing. While normally I wouldn’t be caught watching films at that ungodly hour of the morning, I couldn’t resist seeing this film. It turns out I hit the mother lode as a movie-lover. In fact, it was evident from the laughs and the sniffles from my fellow movie goers that Labaki’s film affected everyone. It’s a comedy, a drama, a musical, a social commentary! It’s quite simple yet extraordinarily complex at the same time. At the end of the festival it received the Cadillac People’s Choice Award, one of the few awards actually given out at Toronto (a non-competitive festival), and has since gone on to snag a U.S. distribution deal with Sony Pictures Classics and break box office records in Lebanon. Earlier in the year, it was an official selection at the Cannes Film Festival in the “Un Certain Regard” category. I didn’t know what to expect from the film, since I’m often misdirected by film synopses and I hadn’t even heard of it prior to September, but not knowing is one of the most exciting parts for me. Here’s what I found.

The story is set in a small town in Lebanon whose population is divided between Muslims and Christians. They have a mosque. They have a church. They eat together, live beside each other, celebrate together, mourn together, and they have spent many generations in peaceful existence with each other. Religious differences seem to be the least of their concerns when it comes to functioning as a community. The film begins with a group of women dressed in black walking together in a close group, moving in unison with the beat of the music over the opening credits, surrounded by the dry, mountainous land where they live. It appears as if they might almost break out in dance, but in a close shot, we see that they are sad, even grief-stricken, clutching rosaries, bouquets and photos. As the music dies down, they break into two groups. They are in a cemetery and each moves to one side of it, then scatters amongst the graves which they are there to tend. We see that one side of the cemetery is Christian, the other Muslim.

While Where Do We Go Now? has an incredibly strong ensemble cast – actresses as the leads with actors as supporting characters – director Nadine Labaki could be considered the main star. She plays “Amale,” the owner of a small café which serves as the heart of the town where people gather, both Muslim and Christian alike. Her secret love, the painter “Rabih” (played by Julian Farhat) who is there to renovate her café, also secretly loves her. Toward the beginning of the film, this is played out in a scene in which they dance closely and confess their love through song, all of which is Amale’s daydream as she washes dishes while Rabih looks good standing on his ladder stealing glimpses of her in the kitchen. I’ve heard the film called a musical, but this isn’t really the case. The characters don’t really break into song to replace dialogue, but rather it’s used to enhance the dialogue, and there are only about three short “musical” sequences in the film.

Everything seems to be going well for the townspeople. They have a television set up by a group of young men and the mayor, and once they’re able to get reception (they’re very far away from the nearest big town), the whole town gathers to watch a program. The mayor makes a speech, obviously very proud that this group of young men was able to make this special event happen. He comments on the happiness he feels at having so many years pass living harmoniously with his Muslim friends and neighbors (he is Christian), but then the television program turns to news and the violence that’s occurring elsewhere in Lebanon between rival groups of people. Desperate to preserve their peaceful way of life and ignorance about the outside world full of conflict, the women of the town begin to shout and complain at their husbands and their male neighbors, about whatever they can think of, in an attempt to drown out the noise of the awful news. This is where the story really begins. This film is about a group of women who go to hilarious lengths to prevent the problems of the outside world from entering their own town.

The comedy and the humorous grotesques which Labaki creates are tempered with drama. The turning point in the film comes when several Muslim men find that the door to the mosque has been left ajar and animals have come in, soiling the prayer rugs. No one takes the blame. In fact, it seems as if no one is to blame. It’s an accident, but a few of the men are determined to find who did it and start blaming their Christian neighbors and friends. Later, it is found that someone has retaliated by vandalizing the church, breaking a statue of the Virgin Mary. Something must be done, and the men seem too concerned about who did what that the women must take over. A series of schemes is put into action to distract the men from the problems in the town: a fake miracle experienced by Madame Yvonne (the mayor’s wife) when she hears the Virgin Mary call out various men of the town for their transgressions (including her own neighbor for things she doesn’t like him doing, as well as her husband), hiring a troupe of exotic Russian dancers to pretend to have a bus breakdown so they have to stay in the town for several days (including being relocated to the homes of many of the men and young boys, who couldn’t be happier), and drugging the men of the town by cooking hashish into breads, cookies and cakes which they are served in Amale’s café as they watch a belly dancing show put on by the Russian dancers. It is this final plan that allows the women to use intelligence gathered by one of the Russian dancers to find where the guns are buried which some of the men have been talking about using. Now, in the height of the enjoyment of the hashish-laced baked goods, drink and dancing women, the men’s desire to kill each other is the furthest thing from their minds. The women sneak out of the café to find the spot where the guns are buried, measuring by counting steps from a landmark, fussing over whose feet are bigger and can calculate properly. Eventually they find the stash and carry it to another place in the town to bury, swearing to each other that they will never speak of this to the men.

Labaki brilliantly captures how women speak to each other and treat each other and, what’s more, what they’re willing to do for one another. These are not women who compete with each other for men – most of them are married, anyway – nor compete for attention or status. They are not only neighbors, they are friends, and despite the difference in their religion, they seem to identify first and foremost as members – and even better yet, the leaders – of the community. They don’t let each other get away with anything, and make it clear what they want. They are self-actualized women who know who they are. They are the heart of the community. And they’re funny as hell. They’re a smart, scheming group of women who want to live in peace and are willing to do almost anything to secure it. Labaki shows women apart from men, outside of the definition of these women as wives or mothers, even potential brides (like Amale might be considered by Rabih). There is a strength in this as a storytelling device as well because it allows the women to be women without the constant presence of men to remind us as viewers that these women somehow belong to someone. Yes, they are trying to solve the problems being played out by the men, but it is simply because they know how to solve them and they know they have the power to do so. They are just more than half of humanity, and they act like it!

What drives the drugging of the male population of the town, though, is what happens a bit earlier. All of the hilarity of the schemes and misdirection that the women attempt is tempered with a dramatic scene so beautifully written, acted and shot, it becomes the film’s reality check. While the town is sleeping in the wee hours one morning, Takla’s (one of the main women, played by Claude Baz Moussawbaa) nephew returns on his motorbike with Takla’s son, Nassim. They had gone the day before to a nearby city and spent the night so they could sell the load of goods they had carried on the bike. But Takla finds her son is dead, having been shot by a stray bullet as he and his cousin tried to escape an area where there was a violent conflict. Labaki does not shy away or use some type of cinematographic cop out to avoid the pain this woman feels at realizing her son is dead. She puts the camera on her and lets the woman tell her own story, pulling her son off of the motorbike, cradling him in her arms, rocking him back and forth, wailing. It’s a stunning performance and a sobering moment in the film where the reality that exists outside of the town is dumped right onto Takla’s doorstep. She hides her son’s body in the well. She is determined to not let his death destroy the town and destroy the future she undoubtedly was determined for him to have: peace. Only days later do her closest friends demand to know what has happened (she is sad, reclusive, and they know something is wrong), so she tells them. They all swear not to say a word, and they begin to hatch a plan.

When both the priest and the imam of the town announce on the town’s speaker that all men are required to show up for a meeting at Amale’s café, it is then that the women put their hashish plan into action. Persevering to recover the way of life that existed before the men’s Muslim-Christian hatred came to a boil, one morning their husbands and children find them to have switched religions. The Christian women are now Muslim, the Muslim women now Christian. The mayor wakes to find that there are wall hangings in Arabic and his wife wearing a hijab and praying on her prayer rug, uttering “Allahu Akbar” (Allah is great) over and over until he demands to know what’s going on. Takla, whose older son Issam tried to find a gun in Takla’s house so he could find who killed his brother, Nassim, wakes to his convert mother as well (while he is tied up in bed after Takla grazed him with a shotgun to prevent him from trying to kill anyone, then restrained him from trying it again). All of the women of the town convert this morning as they plan for the funeral of Nassim. In the cemetery, with the Muslim and Christian sides separated by a narrow path, the women all dressed in black follow the pallbearers who walk to the end of the path and turn around to face them, still holding Nassim’s coffin. “What?” asks one of the women. One of the pallbearers, knowing each woman is now of the other religion, responds “Where do we go now?”

This is a gorgeous film with a grace and respect for humanity; Nadine Labaki is a tremendous talent. This film is Lebanon’s entry for the 2012 Academy Awards and it deserves to be. Not only does it paint a picture of the world in which we could live, but one in which she should. The leadership role of women is essential not just in this film but in any possible scenario for peace, conflict resolution and sustainable pluralism. It’s just in Where Do We Go Now? the work to solve the world’s problems seems a lot more fun!

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Kyna Morgan is the founder and author of Her Film, a blog and global project to build audiences for films by, for and about women, and is a published researcher on the topic of African American women filmmakers of the silent and early sound eras of cinema. She has a background in film studies, entertainment administration and publicity, and spends her free time seeking out the world’s best vegan food while sharing her love of Canada.