Sisterhood in the repressive society of Beirut: an Other Woman, a defiled fiancée, a closet lesbian, an aging actress, a lonesome seamstress, a demented bag lady, all in orbit around a second-class beauty shop called Si Bella (the “B” hanging upside down on the façade, the electricity prone to outages). The material encompasses professional intimacies, such as the Lebanese lesbian washing the hair of an enticing customer, or the Other Woman giving a facial wax job to an admiring policeman; and, although never heavy, it also encompasses larger sociological observations, such as the beat-cop harassment of the engaged couple parked after dark, or the difficulty of a woman without identification booking a decent hotel for an assignation, finally settling for a fleabag and cleaning the bathroom herself. Those are all fine scenes, but they’re excelled by the scene — comic, romantic, keenly psychological — of the sympathetic policeman having an imaginary phone conversation from the café opposite the beauty parlor, making up lines to match the mood of the woman in the window: the star and director, Nadine Labaki. With Yasmine Elmasri, Joanna Moukarzel, Gisèle Aouad, and Adel Karam. (2007) — Duncan Shepherd
This movie is not currently in theaters.