Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Mira Shaib
Starring: Diamand Abou Abboud, Bilal Al Hamwi, Betty Taoutel
Mira Shaib's Arzé does little to hide the fact that it's heavily influenced by
Vittorio De Sica's Bicycle Thieves. The plot of that classic of Italian Neo-Realism, which sees a father
and son traverse post-war Rome in search of the stolen bicycle the former
needs to carry out his job, is transferred here to 2019 Beirut and the
bicycle is swapped for a motor-scooter. Shaib is by no means the first
filmmaker to deliver a quasi-remake of De Sica's film, to which
practically every drama that involves a protagonist scrabbling for money
in a constricted time frame owes a debt - but she is perhaps the most
blatant. Far from gritty drama however, Shaib and her writers Louay Khraish and Faissal Sam Shaib have kneaded this idea into
a rather light and breezy comedy.
The eponymous Arzé (Diamand Abou Abboud) is a 34-year-old single
mother who operates a small pie-making business from the home she shares
with her teenage son Kinan (Bilal Al Hamwi) and her emotionally
brittle older sister Layla (Betty Taoutel). Kinan delivers the
scrumptious looking pies on his bike, but this restricts the amount of
deliveries that can be made. To keep up with growing demand, Arzé makes a
down-payment on a scooter and presents it to Kinan as a gift for his 18th
birthday. Kinan is all too aware that his mother bought the vehicle for
her own benefit, but he gladly accepts it nonetheless. What Kinan and
Layla don't know is that Arzé made the payment by secretly pawning Layla's
most prized possession, a piece of jewelry gifted to her by a mysteriously
departed lover who has left her in such a fragile state that she can no
longer leave the house.
While Kinan is visiting friends, the scooter is stolen. With the police
proving useless, Arzé decides she must find the scooter herself and so
sets out on a quest across Beirut with a reluctant Kinan in tow.
Shaib highlights the infamous sectarian divisions of the Lebanese capital
while also mocking their absurdities. Every time Arzé receives a new tip
regarding the location of the scooter it requires her to travel to a
distinct ethnic neighbourhood. This sees her faking the required accents
and renaming Kinan with a moniker that won't draw attention to his true
ethnicity (her own name seems malleable enough that she doesn't need to
alter it). Arzé's own background is never made clear, though she seems
both apolitical and irreligious, so focussed on holding her family
together that she has no time for politics. A running gag that's arguably
run into the ground sees Arzé pester a hippy shopkeeper for a variety of
religious garments and trinkets to help her pull off her various
disguises.
The movie is at its most humorous when explicitly highlighting the
ingrained bigotry of the divided citizens of Beirut, with members of one
group keen to point to another faction as the most likely to indulge in
the sort of thievery to which Arzé has fallen victim. We've become so
accustomed to western cinema depicting a dubiously utopian United Colors
of Benetton society where everyone gets along and nobody ever mentions
race or religion that it's somewhat refreshing to see a film be so openly
honest about the divisions that persist, and not just in Lebanon. When the
hippy store owner boasts about her store being "inclusive," Arzé asks her
son what the word means. "No idea," is his reply. It's a comic bit that
appears to simultaneously mock both Lebanese ignorance and western
institutions' cynical wielding of that term as a marketing tool.
The lightness of touch is so disarming here that non-Lebanese viewers may
require a settling-in period to click with the film's wavelength. In the
west we tend to only see Middle Eastern movies that portray the more
negative aspects of the region in a deeply serious manner. Some of the
comedy here will undoubtedly land better with a Lebanese audience, but
much of it is universal and there are few major cities around the world
that don't have divisions, whether they be cultural, racial, religious or
economic. The code-switching engaged in by Arzé from one neighbourhood to
another isn't all that different to how Anthony Newley behaves as the
titular protagonist of the classic British social realist drama The Small World of Sammy Lee as he negotiates the various ethnic enclaves of 1960s London on a
similarly desperate quest.
Unlike the pristine pies its heroine uses to get information from
salivating shopkeepers, Arzé is a little overcooked in places and relies too heavily on filling
in backstories through soapy speeches. The handling of Leyla's subplot is
particularly melodramatic and Hany Adel's score is treacly to
a distracting degree in points. But there's much to raise a smile here as
Shaib highlights a divisive mentality that's so depressingly ridiculous
yet undeniably relatable you simply have to laugh.
