"A Perfect Day" is released in France
The Lebanese-French movie A Perfect Day has been released throughout France on March 1.
Directed by Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, the movie is set in present-day Beirut and portrays one day in the life of Malek (Ziad Saad), a young man who lives with his mother Claudia (Julia Kassar). The two are still griefing after the sudden disapperance of the head of the family during the 1975-1990 civil war. Claudia has not yet coped with the idea that his husband is most probably dead and will not come back home one day. Malek, stifled by his mother, is pressing his girlfriend Zeina (Alexandra Kahwagi) not to leave him.
The atmosphere in the movie is nervous, oppressive, morose, sometimes resembling Waiting for Godot, where the interaction between the characters emphasized tedium and the meaninglessness of life. The sense of passivity and evasion from reality is well rendered through Malek's narcolepsy crises and the hallucinated nocturnal sequence where a completely bewildered Malek drives wearing his girlfriend's contact lenses.
The movie contains plenty of clichés about Beirut: B018, the 37 Degrees bar in hectic Rue Monot, the Zalqa highway at night, shopping in Verdun and morning jogging along the Corniche. However, the effort of dealing with the scars of the war and tackling the thorny subjects of oblivion and recollection of the past is certainly commendable.
Can you live, love, create if you remain trapped in the past? Is it fair to forget, as if nothing has happened? Can you endure the guilt complex and the anguish related to an uncertain future?
Born in 1969, Khalil Joreige and Joana Hadjithomas live and work in Beirut, where they teach at the Institut d'études scéniques, audiovisuelles et cinématographiques of the Université Saint-Joseph. Their first full-length film, a French-Lebanese-Canadian coproduction called Al Bayt el Zaher (Autour de la maison rose), was released in 1999. In 2000, they shot the documentary Khiam about the infamous Khiam detention camp, which had been created by the Israeli proxy militia of the South Lebanon Army with the support of the Israeli army. Another documentary, called Al Film al Mafkoud (Le film perdu), was released in early 2003. At the end of 2003, they returned to fiction stories with the medium-length film Ramad (Cendres).
A Perfect Day received two awards from the critics at the 58th Locarno International Film Festival.
Directed by Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, the movie is set in present-day Beirut and portrays one day in the life of Malek (Ziad Saad), a young man who lives with his mother Claudia (Julia Kassar). The two are still griefing after the sudden disapperance of the head of the family during the 1975-1990 civil war. Claudia has not yet coped with the idea that his husband is most probably dead and will not come back home one day. Malek, stifled by his mother, is pressing his girlfriend Zeina (Alexandra Kahwagi) not to leave him.
The atmosphere in the movie is nervous, oppressive, morose, sometimes resembling Waiting for Godot, where the interaction between the characters emphasized tedium and the meaninglessness of life. The sense of passivity and evasion from reality is well rendered through Malek's narcolepsy crises and the hallucinated nocturnal sequence where a completely bewildered Malek drives wearing his girlfriend's contact lenses.
The movie contains plenty of clichés about Beirut: B018, the 37 Degrees bar in hectic Rue Monot, the Zalqa highway at night, shopping in Verdun and morning jogging along the Corniche. However, the effort of dealing with the scars of the war and tackling the thorny subjects of oblivion and recollection of the past is certainly commendable.
Can you live, love, create if you remain trapped in the past? Is it fair to forget, as if nothing has happened? Can you endure the guilt complex and the anguish related to an uncertain future?
Born in 1969, Khalil Joreige and Joana Hadjithomas live and work in Beirut, where they teach at the Institut d'études scéniques, audiovisuelles et cinématographiques of the Université Saint-Joseph. Their first full-length film, a French-Lebanese-Canadian coproduction called Al Bayt el Zaher (Autour de la maison rose), was released in 1999. In 2000, they shot the documentary Khiam about the infamous Khiam detention camp, which had been created by the Israeli proxy militia of the South Lebanon Army with the support of the Israeli army. Another documentary, called Al Film al Mafkoud (Le film perdu), was released in early 2003. At the end of 2003, they returned to fiction stories with the medium-length film Ramad (Cendres).
A Perfect Day received two awards from the critics at the 58th Locarno International Film Festival.
On the day before everything will change, the day on which the decision will be taken to change everything.
posted by Skylark at 3:35 PM
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