Wissam Charaf, the Lebanese/French director and co-writer of Dirty, Difficult, Dangerous paints life in Lebanon as unwelcoming and hostile to those from other countries. The film focuses on a pair of lovers. Ahmed (played by Ziad Jallad) is a Syrian refugee unable to seek employment in Beirut and forced to beg. And Mehdia (played by Clara Couturet) is an Ethiopian housemaid. Only she’s not really a housemaid. When the madam of the house discovers Mehdia with Ahmed, she takes Mehdia to the place that she got her from to complain. Only it’s not a traditional hiring center. The man there tells Mehdia the only way out of her contract with madam is to pay off what she paid to bring her to Beirut etc, and then she’d have to go back to Ethiopia. She can’t stay in Lebanon and work, and she can’t run because he holds her passport. She is a slave.
This knowledge makes some early scenes come into new light and sharper focus. The mister of the house is senile, and early on in the film, after watching Nosferatu, he seems to think himself a vampire and attacks Mehdia in her bed. At the time her putting aside the incident seemed to be a result of purely her affection for the older man, but after the reveal of her true relationship in the household, it read differently. She accepted it because she had no choice, regardless of her sentiments toward the man.
While the film mostly resides in the world of drama, it does have comedic moments. Mehdia has a dry humour to her. And there’s a wonderful scene that fuses some important dramatic exposition with humorous commentary on white documentarians looking to profit/benefit from the suffering of refugees from the Middle East. That said the final sequence, which veers towards fantasy, is a little jarring in the 84-minute film. It tonally didn’t fit with the rest of the film which tracked Mehdia and Ahmed’s love, the obstacles they had to face to pursue it, life in Lebanon, and why they needed to get out of Lebanon for hopefully something better without any flourishes. Though jarring and not at peace with the rest of the film, the contents of the ending were set up at the beginning of the film. She asked him about his voice, why he and others like him call out the way they do, about his injury, and what the doctors said about the metal. The doctors said his body would have to expel it on its own. As they head towards the boat and new beginnings, one does wonder if his body expelled some of the past behind him, even if they picked it up to carry along as dead weight.
While this film is set in Lebanon, viewers from other countries must consider how refugees (and immigrants) are met within their own borders.
Dirty, Difficult, Dangerous premiered in Venice and recently screened at Red Sea International Film Festival.
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