Mark Reviews Movies: COSTA BRAVA, LEBANON

Costa Brava, Lebanon, Kino Lorber

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Review by Mark Dujsik | July 14, 2022

"In a near future," Lebanon has become a place of complete corruption, constant civil unrest, and overwhelming pollution. Following a statue of the nation's mostly despised president through the streets of Beirut, co-writer/director Mounia Akl's camera gives us a brief tour of that city, with garbage bags scattered along the sidewalks and people yelling obscenities at even a representation of their government. Things look dire at the start of Costa Brava, Lebanon, but as history has repeatedly taught us, they can only get worse.

Akl's film, her debut feature, is an inherently political one, of course, as the government does continue to mess up matters, lie about its intentions and efficacy, and destroy the lives of a family that, some time ago, decided they wanted nothing to do with their country's failings. They once tried to fix things, with an idealistic sense that protests, art, and other activities could encourage change. Look where it got them. Worse, look at where apathy and the attempt to escape get them now.

This is a family of five: a husband and wife, two children, and the husband's mother. They moved to a farm at the top of a hill some years ago, and we soon learn that Walid (Saleh Bakri) and Souraya (Nadine Labaki) live next to a valley that might be the only green land that remains in Lebanon. Any place else like it has become landfill for the country's garbage, and that opening shot and some news reports make it obvious that even all of that land is insufficient for the population's trash-disposal needs. The government can only burn so much garbage, and it has definitely tried to do that, too.

Walid and Souraya have two daughters: 17-year-old Tala (Nadia Charbel) and the younger Rim (twins Ceana and Geana Restom). The young girl is a bit eccentric, after having her head filled with scary stories about the world by her father. Meanwhile, Tala is at an age of looking forward to some kind of future away from home, but her awareness of the possibilities—or even just the possibility—of leaving is slim.

There's no internet here, partially because of the farm's remote location and mostly because Walid has decided against having online access in his home. This even bothers his mother Zeina (Liliane Chacar Knoury), who is sick and in need of an oxygen tank after decades of smoking, because she wants to spend some of her final years traveling to the places she couldn't during the rest of her life. She can't even look at pictures of those places now, let alone plan any kind of trip.

There's a real, incisive connection in Akl and Clara Roquet's screenplay, between the mishandling of an entire country, looking for short term solutions to long-term and all-encompassing problems, and Walid's own attitude about his family's life. That's especially true when his sister Alia (Yumna Marwan), who lives in Colombia and owns the farm, sells the land surrounding the house to the government. All of that open, untouched space is perfect for their current need for a quick fix to the garbage crisis: another landfill.

Meanwhile, Walid is stubborn and shortsighted in his own way. A government official named Tarek (François Nour) offers the father money for the house, but Walid refuses. There's nowhere else for them to go, except for Beirut, possibly, but he and Souraya, a famous singer who has since retired, lived the city life, protested corruption, and got nothing out of it. They agreed to a quieter, isolated life, and Walid has every intention of upholding that promise—no matter the cost for himself and his family or, for that matter, whether or not Souraya still believes in that years-ago promise.

Almost all of this film, save for that opening scene and another one that won't be disclosed here, takes place on the farm. That restriction lends both a level of intimacy to our witnessing of the family's dynamics and an encroaching feeling of imprisonment, as well as doom, as the government breaks its promise of a "green" garbage facility, more and more workers and industrial equipment and trash start filling the frame beyond the fence of the property line, and Walid's refusal to leave or even have a discussion about another life turn him bitter, angry, and controlling.

Bakri's performance is skilled in making Walid alternately sympathetic in his principled determination and worrisome in how easily that principled stance becomes destructive obstinacy. Labaki's performance, on the other hand, is all about restraint and quietude, while also communicating that her current regret and resentment about living in this newly formed hell might have been present for much longer (There's a dreamily simple but melancholy scene in which Souraya, singing to her daughters, imagines that the window of the bedroom has transformed into that of a train, moving past a life she did or still could have).

Some of this feels a bit hastily considered, such as Rim's superstitious counting and Tala's sexual awakening on account of Tarek. However, the core depictions of this family, these characters' static or evolving outlooks, and how much that has been left unspoken gradually comes to the surface are thoughtfully presented. Then, obviously, we have the political and ecological aspects of Costa Brava, Lebanon. Those don't need to be clarified, because they are so to-the-point, but that doesn't make the waking, mounting nightmare of the growing landfill, as well as its devastating effects on the land and the family, any less forceful or frightening.

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