✭ ✭ ✭ ✭ Read critic reviews
France, Lebanon · 2007
Rated PG · 1h 36m
Director Nadine Labaki
Starring Nadine Labaki, Yasmine Al Massri, Joanna Moukarzel, Gisèle Aouad
Genre Comedy, Drama, Romance
Please login to add films to your watchlist.
A Beirut beauty salon is the sacred meeting place of five Lebanese women struggling with life, love, and happiness. This romantic comedy centers the everyday lives of everyday women, unique in its refusal to reduce Beirut to a warzone and instead showcase the potential for sisterhood across generations.
Beauty-parlor romantic comedy has been done to death and beyond, but what Caramel lacks in originality is redeemed by its exuberant sensuality and astute commentary on the way Lebanese women sit uncomfortably in the crosshairs of their country’s clash between patriarchal tradition and Westernized modernity.
It's a reassuring and delicious film, but in no sense an adventurous one.
Caramel is a sweeter and more believable version of "Steel Magnolias," Middle Eastern style.
ReelViews by James Berardinelli
It's refreshing for a romantic comedy not to follow the formula by rote. I only wish I could be as enthusiastic about the amount of screen time accorded to certain characters who are more tedious than endearing.
Wall Street Journal by Joe Morgenstern
All but one of the actresses in Caramel are nonprofessionals -- not unprofessional, just untrained in the craft -- and they are, to a woman, enchanting. So is this Lebanese comedy.
Entertainment Weekly by Lisa Schwarzbaum
A Lebanese variation on sweetly soapy dramas about Women Who Bond With Wet Hair.
At its best, Caramel boasts a quietly engaging slice-of-slice casualness.
Caramel, by the way, gets its name from a blend of sugar, lemon juice and water that is boiled until it turns into a paste used to remove unwanted hair in the Middle East.
Seven samurai answer a village's request for protection after they lose their masters and fall on hard times.
Before the fall of the Berlin Wall, East Germany's secret police listened to your secrets.
A tragic accident brings together four families on three continents as they navigate its aftermath.
How far will one mother go?
As Arletty suddenly becomes seriously ill, Marcel's path crosses with an underage illegal immigrant from Africa, who needs Marcel's help to hide from the police.
An elementary school class is left reeling after their teacher dies by suicide—until the substitute arrives…
A mystery, a political thriller, and a love story. An Israeli-Arab doctor, devastated by his wife's death in a terrorist attack, uncovers her startling secret.
With every mystery comes another, and another, and another...
How to become a man when your mother and your closed circle have decided otherwise?
Can you fall in love with someone you've never met?
A young novitiate discovers a family secret dating back to World War II and must follow her history — wherever it takes her.
Opposites attract; but is that enough?
All love is created equal.
Zain, a hardened 12-year-old boy struggling to survive on the streets of Beirut, sues his parents for his conception.