Where Do We Go Now review

“Put a veil on and be done with it,” one of the Islamic women says to a Christian in Nadine Labaki’s latest Lebanese film. Trying to accurately present a balanced and well thought out argument about the problems between Islam and Christianity is a tough thing to do. Heck, not even the rest of the world seems to be able to do it! So trying to tackle the issue in just over ninety minutes is always bound to be a little bit messy. Sadly for Where Do We Go Now, a little bit messy would have better off than what they were left with.

The film is about an unspecified village in the Middle East where a group of women are trying to prevent more of their men from fighting with each other over their religious differences. Both Muslims and Christians inhabit the village, with their places of worship sitting side by side in the dusty, barren landscape. The women all seem to be able to get along with each other but, boys being boys, there is nothing the men like more than a bit of rough and tumble. As more and more fighting encroaches towards the peaceful village and after some escaped goats break into the Mosque, tensions mount and violence flairs up. The women find various ways to keep the peace, including hiring in a troop of Ukrainian dancing women to distract them and more hash cookies than you could shake a hippy at.

It is a film made with the greatest of intentions, just not with the greatest skill and it gets lost along the way a hundred times, at one point even becoming a Mills and Boon esq musical comedy. It bounces across genres erratically and never takes the time to develop most of the central female characters. There are just so many of them! It is only half way through, when Amale (Labaki - Caramel) gives a rousing speech to the men inside the local cafe to stop all of their nonsense do you realise that she is in fact supposed to be the main character.

There are some touching moments in the film and images that really upset too like when an angry Christian attacks a crippled Islamic child. However it is hard to feel too emotionally involved with any of it as the poignant moments feel like forced devices to make you feel something and the comedy is so rambling that the scenes drag on and never reach any sort of climax.

Where Do We Go Now has charming moments in it, particularly the relationships between all of the women in the village. This is a skill Nadine Labaki has as a writer/director but sadly the heavy political messages get in the way of these moments and prevent the film from being as good as her debut Caramel, which focused only on the individual plights of the women involved.

It is another modern day Lysistrata story about women, Islam and pesky men up to their usual tomfoolery all mixed together with a hit of comedy and a sad, dark centre. This seems to be a very popular theme at the moment and sadly for this film Radu Mihaileanu’s film The Source does it better. Where Do We Go Now simply tries too hard to be loveable and leaves you feeling cold.