Courtesy of Cannes Film Festival
Boluwatife Treasure Bankole and Zain Al Rafeea in 'Capharnaum.'
Actor-director Nadine Labaki explores the poorest slums of Lebanon through the eyes of a child in this Cannes competition entry.
According to one definition found online, Capharnaum means a "disorderly accumulation of objects." Although that's a fantastically uncommercial title for a movie, the concept suits this latest work from actor-writer-director Nadine Labaki (Caramel, Where Do We Go Now?). She's made up a grab bag of ideas and plot elements that work surprisingly effectively as a melodrama with a message. Several messages, in fact, all illustrated through the ordeals suffered by 12-year-old Zain (Zain Al Rafeea), a child fighting to survive in the slums and shanty towns of Lebanon. Although the narrative is structured through a highly unbelievable instigating conceit — Zain is trying to sue his own parents in court for giving him life in the first place — Labaki lures such outstanding performances out of the almost entirely non-professional cast and sketches such a credible view of this wretchedly poor milieu that the flaws are mostly forgivable.
Labaki and casting director Jennifer Haddad have sought actors whose life stories track closely to the backstories of the characters they're playing. That means star Al Rafeea really is a kid who had until recently been working, per the press notes, as a delivery boy since the age of 10, while Cedra Izam, the girl who plays his 11-year-old sister, is a Syrian refugee who was discovered while selling chewing gum in the streets of Beirut, and so on.........
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