Review by Benjamin Poole
Directed by: Tina Gharavi
Starring: Tala Calil, Assaad Bouab, Flavia Bechara
Fast on the heels of Blue Film and Queen at Sea, films where sex is weaponised and variably viewed as problematic, and following the 2026 summer of stilted sex sashayed in via The Invite and I Want Your Sex, in which, once more, nookie or even the mere promise of it becomes a source of social discomfiture and public shame, Tina Gharavi's (with co-writing credits shared by star Tala Calil) bildungsromance Shadows of Beirut conversely builds its drama around a millennial woman (Calil - very good, which is fortuitous as the whole film depends on her) who is sexually inhibited. Don't blame you, Lana; having it off is a lot of silly bother, and no wonder Gen Z are turning their backs (steady) on it. Pain in the arse and more trouble than it's worth. But while we may be considering bromide in the martini (not that I'm a potential danger, but because it would be a relief to go at least three minutes without either trying to have sex with my partner or, much more likely, obsessively considering it at the expense of all other rational thought), Lana's sexual aversion is due to varying traumas linked to her culture, her family and, it seems, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2. Can Lana conquer her emotional boundaries, come to terms with her past, and wash her hands for two rounds of Happy Birthday to put one on her beatifically patient fella? All will be revealed within the sweeping melodrama of Shadows of Beirut.
Living in London circa half a decade ago, Lana is in a relationship with Ben (played by Michael E. Rodgers, Ben is such a "Ben," a pleasant enough middle-class wetwipe as all Bens seem to be), that is marred by a lack of intimacy which has its roots in Lana's Lebanese childhood. In a twist of unfortunate serendipity Lana is contacted from overseas by her cousin Rami (Assaad Bouab) with news that her estranged father is unwell. She decides to make the pilgrimage home, a journey complicated not only by the embattled state of Beirut but the ongoing coronavirus. Who remembers COVID, eh? Clapping the nurses, queuing for bog roll. What were that all about, etc? (with more and more NHS cuts going ahead the ramifications certainly seem forgotten...). Produced during the 2020 lockdowns, Shadows of Beirut lived the pandemic. As Lana travels and interacts with the city, DoP Jaime Ackroyd's camera is tentative, expressing the fraught caution which characterised interaction at the time. There are numerous close ups on masks and on hands, the quintessentiality of hand sanitiser; the lens capturing the alienation with fresh eyes. In the first instance, it's like biting into a madeleine made of banana bread, refreshing the memory with an immediacy that post-lockdown films depicting the era don't quite manage. Problem is, at the time cultural shifts like the lack of touching, the two-metre rule, etc were new, hence Shadows of Beirut's understandable fascination and prioritising of the safeguarding (mind you, 2022's The Batman was filming at the same time and they're also all wearing masks in that, etc). Having come out of it the other side now, the wide-eyed portrayal hits a little differently and may be an iconotheca you'd rather forget.
Gharavi and Calil opportunistically deploy the pandemic as both an intensifier and correlation of Lana's trauma, a visual shorthand of her pensive and fractured nature. Isomorphism is further evident in the representation of Beirut, which, due to the film's opening sequence featuring a devastating controlled explosion, is positioned as war torn and all but ruined. However, as with the narrative parallelism of COVID, it is unclear whether Lana's psychological agony is representative of the city's state or vice-versa, and the result is that as Lana wanders the streets and frets over childhood experience, conceptually Shadows of Beirut becomes something of a hall of shattered mirrors. In terms of how the city is visually portrayed, Gharavi intriguingly films within Beirut's liminal spaces: a clandestine night club is accessed through a mechanic shop, and a bombed-out building is the home of a bohemian community wherein old women dispense camomile tea, geezers talk about the economy and a piano plays a lament. Lana's guide to the secret and surviving Beirut is Sirine (Flavia Bechara), a gay nurse who befriends Lana following an in-hospital panic attack. Out and proud, confident and friendly, Sirine is a direct foil to Lana, another structural juxtaposition in this film of dualities.
Call me an old romantic, but I was sort of hoping that Shadows of Beirut would take a narrative turn and become a tale of homosexual awakening: Sirine and Lana get on so well, almost like they've known each other all their lives... And the Lebanese lesbian certainly brings out the best in our protagonist, taking her to the beach and improving her low esteem (unlike boring-ass Ben who, in the words of another bisexual love triangle, thought it was there for good so he never tried). This isn't just me automatically wanting what's best for everyone, my reading was facilitated by the smooth and lovely Hallmark channel sheen of the film; a warm glow which contrasts the brutalised city and softens the action, leading to amorous idealisation. Ejjeh on my face, then, when the twist comes in at the end to tie the disparate thematic aspects of the plot together... A refutation which was however welcome is the eventual reveal of the origin of Lana's ongoing anxiety, which, carrying my own trauma from the Bad Sex of recently reviewed films and the explicit link to the character's aversion to getting her leg over, I feared would be linked to early sexual encounters. Thank fuck it wasn't, but upon the actual anagnorisis one wonders how it all does actually tesselate (could potential horrors have been toned down from an earlier draft? If so, I think the right decision was made because this is too sweet natured a film to navigate such material)... Speaking of things slotting together, the denouement constructs a tasteful, honey-lit reunion between Lana and Ben with her issues resolved, and her libido awakened. A happy ending (esp for Ben, the luckiest man in Beirut) which, in a final apposition, finds light in the shadows of the city.
Shadows of Beirut is in UK/ROI cinemas from September 25th.
