From Lebanon directly to the shore of Venice, Sea Salt crosses the Mediterranean Sea to dock in the Italian kermess, where it premieres in the section Orizzonti.
After Pasthèque, an experimental short movie shot in Super8 dealing with a woman trying to get in contact with her inner self, Leila Basma once again focuses on the desires of women in Lebanese society. Her new short movie is a bittersweet coming-of-age that takes place in just one day, tinted with a socio-political urgency that is conveyed in a subtle and effective way, without ever being blatant.
It tells the story of Nayla, an almost 18-year-old girl in modern Lebanon who is experiencing the first taste of freedom and independence but must face the pressure of her more conservative family. A dichotomy that is glaring from the very beginning. It’s a hot summer day, she wants to wear short jeans as she will have to wait tables at the beach bar she works at, but her older brother won’t let her: “My friends and I make fun of girls who dress like that”. She wants to go to university in Beirut but according to her brother “it’s full of parties and sluts” and girls shouldn’t be allowed to live there alone. She wants to stay, but for her brother “there’s nothing left here”: he wants to take her to Canada where he lives. A more suitable place, where she could be easily controlled. Whilst her family represents religious and cultural tradition, the young girl embodies a thirst for freedom.
But the two don’t seem necessarily in contradiction for her, and this is clear since the opening of the movie. She does the prescribed ablutions before reciting the prayers, her body is fully covered and she seems involved with the practice. And then right after we see her in the bathroom as she shaves her groin to get ready for her day. She cuts herself, and the blood mingles with water, an element that in this film seems, for many reasons, bearer of healing powers. As someone will say later “The sea salt is good for stopping the bleeding”.
But not only for that. The salted Lebanese sea is in fact a recurrent topic in this 19-minute movie. For sure as a part of the narrative environment. The girl is at the beach, either at work or with her friends, who come to represent the alternative way of life of the young Lebanese society: they smoke, drink, freely, have sex, play in the water, hug and talk freely about the future. A future which for the protagonist will be decided soon: she will sneak out the next day to go to Beirut for a university interview. But that’s tomorrow: tonight, she has other plans. It is in fact the night when Nayla will lose virginity with her boyfriend.
But the sea is not only the background of this quick coming-of-age drama short. It is also the universe where the protagonist seeks refuge from the pressure of the world, she lives in. in water, she can be healed: free, light and alone. It’s either daydreams or nocturnal ones those moments when the girl immerse herself in the water of her inner desires, and that once again testify the interest of Leila Basma in her character’s inner life, since her very first short movie, Man Is Hunter, the story of a 17-year-old boy having the same nightmare every night.
Sea Salt is in one word a precious film which hides pressing topics behind the veil of a summer lightness, and in the freshness of a very relatable teenager. The directing choices are graceful, the cinematography is just perfectly balanced and the camera is able to stay close to the characters and to let their desire come to the surface. It’s a film that doesn’t linger on judgment nor demonize any cultural choices with labels such as right or wrong, but simply focuses on the power of freedom and on the needs of the youth. That is what which makes it so powerful.
Leila Basma is currently working on her feature Dance With Me, the story of her uncle Adam Basma, a belly dancer whom she already focused on in her earlier film The Adam Basma Project.
Again, a film about fleeing a conventional Lebanese family to follow “extravagant” dreams, or simply, dreams.
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