Et Maintenant, on va où? (2011)

Directed by: Nadine Labaki | 110 minutes | drama, comedy | Actors: Claude Baz Moussawbaa, Leyla Hakim, Nadine Labaki, Yvonne Maalouf, Antoinette Noufaily, Julian Farhat, Ali Haidar, Kevin Abboud, Petra Saghbini, Mostafa Al Sakka, Sasseen Kawzally, Caroline Labaki, Anjo Rihane, Mohammad Aqeden, Gisèle

The intentions of director and co-screenwriter Nadine Labaki were good, but they weigh too much on the heart of this Lebanese musical. ‘Et maintenant, on va où?’ is therefore not an everyday fare, but it is precisely the wish to be one that makes the film fall. The moral is taken so far and made tangible that it is at the expense of credibility, and the film becomes like a caricature; hardly to be taken seriously.

Although the cast and crew are from Lebanon, the name of this country is never spoken in the film. After all, it is a two-way battle that is so universal that it can occur anywhere. A group of Christians and Muslims live together peacefully, but this peace is under pressure from the unrest in the nearby areas, where adherents of different faiths are literally fighting each other.

Fictional, but inspired by the daily acts of war in her own country, Labaki wrote the story which she also directed and in which she played a crucial lead. Perhaps a bit too much of a good thing, because although her acting is not bad, as a director she does not know how to keep it all together. The way Labaki tries to take a village as the main character is reminiscent of Federico Fellini’s masterpiece ‘Amarcord’, but her own work lacks the coherence and originality that made Fellini’s film stand out from the crowd. ‘Et maintenant, on va où’ is such a meaningless whole. The outcome and characters are clear so quickly that the film then bounces back for over an hour, barely able to find its own way. The conflict between the population groups has been shown before, and in many cases much better than in this Lebanese-French production, which is somewhere between a drama, a comedy and a musical, but actually falls short in all areas. For example, Labaki’s attempt to unite people with film is understandable and beautiful as an idea, but the execution fails miserably.