Where Do We Go Now?
An infuriatingly light-hearted look at sectarian conflict from the director of Caramel falls flat.
Nadine Labaki's new film is called Where Do We Go Now? but a more pertinent question might be, 'What was she thinking?' Having made an impressive directorial debut with the modestly scaled Caramel, Labaki attempts to take a comedic look at sectarian conflict with her latest picture – and she flounders almost immediately.
Set in a remote Lebanese village, the film details the extraordinary lengths the female villagers go to in order to quell the urges driving their menfolk to acts of tit-for-tat violence. These include drugging them with hash brownies, faking a miracle at the local church and – in one of many inexplicable developments – enlisting a troupe of travelling Ukrainian strippers.
Labaki plays it all for broad laughs and incorporates a couple of musical numbers, but she loses sight of the seriousness at the heart of her story (the lack of impact provided by the death of one character is absurd), and this infuriatingly facile film becomes almost unendurable as it lurches from one misguided set-piece to another. [Philip Concannon]