Cinema
A Suspended Life
غزل البنات
Jocelyne Saab · 1985
Synopsis
Samar, a teenager driven from southern Lebanon by the war, has grown up among fighters and escapes from Beirut through the Egyptian romantic comedies she watches on television. She meets Karim, a bourgeois painter withdrawn from the world, downcast by the political situation, who draws arabesques in a pink villa. A first love, platonic, is born between them, one that only the war has made possible.
Context
Its author, who had assisted Volker Schlöndorff on a shoot in Beirut in 1981, moves here for the first time from documentary to fiction. Gérard Brach signed its final version; Jacques Weber plays the painter, Hala Bassam plays Samar, with Juliet Berto and Denise Filiatrault, and the money came from France, Lebanon and Canada. First presented under the title L'Adolescente, sucre d'amour, it was released in cinemas only in 1988, under its current title.
Who it is for
In Arabic and French, subtitled. A platonic love in the midst of war, carried by two characters and by places in Beirut that have since disappeared.
Prizes and reception
Selected for the Directors' Fortnight at Cannes in 1985; restored in 2025, it has been screened again in Bologna, Vienna and New York.
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