Caper­naum

Lebanese direc­tor Nadine Laba­ki made a con­sid­er­able splash in 2007 with her charm­ing ensem­ble debut, Caramel, set in a busy beau­ty salon, but then major­ly struck out with her over-reach­ing and naive­ly ​“polit­i­cal” 2011 fol­low-up, Where Do We Go Now?.

Her new film, Caper­naum, attempts to claw back some of that lost faith, ini­tial­ly teas­ing a seri­ous and out­raged polit­i­cal dra­ma about the prob­lem of over­bur­dened par­ents in devel­op­ing coun­tries, before dou­bling down on the chron­ic sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty of that mis­fir­ing sec­ond feature.

The film opens on sweary 12-year-old scamp Zain (Zain Al Rafeea) attempt­ing to sue his par­ents for choos­ing to bring him into the world when they clear­ly had nei­ther the inten­tion nor the finan­cial means to nur­ture him into adult­hood. We then flash back to a chron­i­cle of pro­longed hard­ship in which Zain runs away from home in protest at the ill-treat­ment of his young sis­ter who is, against her will, sold off for mar­riage to a man many years her senior.

The remain­der of the film sees him becom­ing de fac­to pro­tec­tor of a defence­less baby after its moth­er goes miss­ing due to a con­trived attempt to secure an ille­gal pass­port. Labaki’s film is wear­ing­ly maudlin, milk­ing a ​‘won’t some­body think of the chil­dren?!’ line of aggres­sive moral­is­ing as it shows Zain descend­ing deep­er into a world of tor­ment and dan­ger. Every shot, every plot pro­gres­sion and line of dia­logue is cal­i­brat­ed for max­i­mum manipulation.

Sup­port­ing play­ers are hasti­ly paint­ed as either good or evil, and the cack-hand­ed­ly polit­i­cal call for laws to pre­vent par­ents hav­ing more chil­dren than they can han­dle is artic­u­lat­ed with bull­horn-like shrill­ness. It’s a film which has no faith in the view­er to unpack messy nuance or draw a con­clu­sion from objec­tive dra­ma. It’s like a fea­ture-length char­i­ty appeal ad, only less fun.