Cinema is at its transportive best when granting glimpses into certain pockets of the world with which most viewers are unfamiliar and might never experience otherwise. The effect can be eye-opening, revelatory and welcome to those with a traveling sensibility, but not the means.
Tripoli, Lebanon – the country’s second-largest city, just north of Beirut – may not be anyone’s first, third or even tenth place to desire being whisked away to, but Ok, Enough, Goodbye undeniably depicts the mechanics of everyday life there in such sobering realistic detail that the visit is satisfying, if not always pleasant.
The first time we see the film’s nameless protagonist (Daniel Arzrouni), he’s in bed calling out to his mother (Nadime Attieh) to find out where she is, just like any needy child or infant might do. Except this man is in his forties and perfectly capable of doing everything this frail woman is and more. He dyes her hair, he drives her around, he sits and plays cards with her. Even though they bicker constantly, leaving her is apparently not an option.
So it throws him in a bit of a tailspin when she suddenly disappears one day while he’s at work manning a bakery. One can hardly blame her for jumping ship. He’s a stubborn man-child whose subsequent attempts at human connection would be amusing if he was less of an insufferable lump. Then again, it’s to writer-directors Rania Attieh and Daniel Garcia’s and even Arzrouni’s credit that none for a second stretches implausibility to garner sympathy from the character. He’s fairly pathetic throughout and the lesson he learns, if he learns one at all, is more about accepting his alienating personality than toning it down.
While most of the scenes involve Man-Baby and his attempt to function without the safety net of his mother, there are occasional diversions in which a narrator informs us about Tripoli and its architecture, once even citing the city’s Wikipedia entry, a curious choice considering how Wikipedia is perhaps the most ephemeral way to obtain information. It’s quickie research reserved for topics in which one is usually only halfway interested.
Another deviation includes some of the non-professional actors out of character giving brief testimonials about their lives in Lebanon, speaking directly to what appears to be an old and barely working home video camera. The washed-out and choppy picture quality suggests they should be begging their families for a ransom, not gabbing about making dresses. It’s choices such as these that keep the film from striking the right balance between travelogue and narrative.
Thankfully the rest of the film is more engaged with its subject matter. Most notably, how maids are treated and distributed in a way not unlike slaves, or how prostitutes court and are courted easily through text messages. These components of life in the sulphur-hued Tripoli are presented matter-of-factly which, again, is both admirable and distancing. Attieh and Garcia never judge their characters for their behavior or circumstances; they merely display it, often while peering through a doorway or window bars, hanging low sometimes, as if the camera has been attached to a kitten stalking its owners. The withdrawn visual style infused with the film’s languid, often sleepy nature at times can be uninviting. But because cinematic depictions of life from this part of the world are rarely exhibited stateside, the arrival of Ok, Enough, Goodbye and its wealth of insight is worth paying attention to.
Grade: B-
‘Ok, Enough, Goodbye’ is available to watch now on Vyer Films
