Where Do We Go Now?

The latest effort from Nadine Labaki, the Arab world’s answer to Nia Vardalos, Where Do We Go Now? details the happenings within a small Middle Eastern community over the course of a few especially eventful weeks – as Labaki focuses on the religious differences between the various residents and the strife that ensues as a result. Labaki, who also appears in the film, has infused Where Do We Go Now? with a pervasively lighthearted vibe that initially holds some promise, with the easygoing atmosphere heightened by the inclusion of an unexpected musical number about ten minutes in. It becomes clear awfully quickly, though, that Labaki is completely out of her depth here, as the filmmaker proves utterly and hopelessly unable to offer up even a single compelling character – which ultimately proves as disastrous as one might’ve feared (eg a character’s sudden death midway through elicits pure apathy from the viewer, since this figure hasn’t been developed in the slightest). Far more troublesome is Labaki’s reliance on unreasonably broad instances of comedy (eg a character pretends to chat with the Virgin Mary in an effort at teaching her fellow denizens an important lesson), with the pervasively inauthentic atmosphere ensuring that the dramatic stuff that crops up on an increasingly frequent basis falls completely and utterly flat. (Most of such moments are just unreasonably melodramatic and heavy-handed in their execution, with Labaki’s decision to elicit uncomfortably histrionic performances from her actors cementing the film’s transformation into a seriously interminable piece of work.) Labaki’s less-than-subtle sensibilities are never more obvious or problematic than in the movie’s third-act twist, and it’s finally obvious that the filmmaker’s persistent speechifying will turn off even those viewers with an inherent sympathy for the problems in the Middle East. The end result is an ambitious misfire that simply doesn’t work in the slightest, as Labaki lacks the subtlety required to seamlessly incorporate the film’s admirable message into the proceedings.

* out of ****