Where Do We Go Now

Review: Where Do We Go Now?
Rating: 5 out of 5
Release Year: September, 2011 (Lebanese)
Length:1hr 50 min
Genre: Comedy/Drama
Main Cast: Claude Baz Moussawbaa (Takla), Layla Hakim (Afaf), Nadime Labaki (Madame Amale), Yvonne Maalouf (Yvonne), Yulia Maroun (Tatiana), Caroline Labaki (Aida), Petra Saghbini (Rita), & Julien Farhat (Rabih)
Director:Nadine Labaki

Synopsis: Set in a small Lebanese village where the mosque and church are next to eachother, Where Do We Go Now, is a film of a group of women who stick together to prevent a religious war. Amal (Nadime Labaki) owns a cafe where local women/men from both religions, Muslim or Christian, get together to talk, brainstorm or simply grief for the loss of their family members. The friction between both religions have been going on for years at this point and the women in the village are tired of it. So, Amal (Nadime Labaki), Afaf (Layla Hakim), Saydeh (Antoinette Noufaily), Takla (Claude Baz Moussawbaa), and Yvonne (Yvonne Malouf), decide to come together and do all they can to hide news from the men in the village. Women who have already lost sons or husbands come up with the great idea to distract their men by faking a miracle to hiring Ukrainian strippers. After a young man, Nadimme, is killed by accident, the women decide they need to take drastic measures to really stop this tension. Meanwhile, Amal (Christian) and Rabih (Muslim), slowly were falling in love for eachother without even knowing it.

Review: A film that I've watched over and over because it's just quite interesting. The film starts and ends very similar with the villagers walking to the grave. This film also includes them singing at times. Simply every second of this film is full of great content. I can say this is by far my favorite film of all time.

On Rotten Tomatoes out of seventy-three reviews people who gave this film a positive review was a surprisingly low percentage of 53%; there was 3,629 rating and about 72% liked it. To be fair this film had many people rating it so the number of positive or negative reviews has a broader scale. I believe that a lot of the negative reviews is because "Drugs, exotic dancers, dodgy deities...this certainly isn't your usual po-faced, worthy Middle Eastern tale" (James Croot).