Where Do We Go Now? (Nadine Labaki, 2011): France, Lebanon, Egypt, Italy

Reviewed by Christopher Connor. Viewed at the Santa Barbara Film Festival.

Where Do We Go Now? was the closing movie of the Santa Barbara Film Festival, and a good choice at that. With Darling Companion as the unfortunate weak opener, it was a relief to get a movie that pulled its weight as the finale. Directed by Nadine Labaki, who also acted, Where Do We Go Now? tells the story of a town where the women attempt to ease the tensions between the Muslim and Christian faith. In a war torn country and surrounded by mines, they do their best not to let their village get destroyed from within.

The movie begins with a mass of women of all ages dressed in black, walking to a cemetery to mourn lost members of their village. Well, not really walking so much as dancing. With this shot we are introduced to the most important characters in the movie: the women. They live in a small village with one cafe, one store, and one television, yet home to two conflicting religions. There is both a church and a mosque. Despite this, they all live in relative peace, thanks, of course, to the women. Their idyllic bubble is soon threatened as Muslims and Christians in surrounding areas continue killing each other. As the news spreads and an accident at the church is mistaken as vandalism, tensions arise and the two groups begin to take action. From goats in the mosque, blood in the holy water, to fights in the cafe, it gets from bad to worse. The women do their best to disrupt the conflicts and keep the men’s minds off getting back at one another by creating humorous distractions. But they can only do so much. As the problems get serious, they are forced to take a more sobering approach.

Where Do We Go Now? is a well crafted film blending all sorts of different techniques that work to please everyone on many different levels. From the beautiful opening scene, we are set up for the rest of the movie which gives us a musical as well as a movie mixed with light hearted comedy and heart wrenching drama. The film begs the questions of what is truly important in life and our relations with people in our community as well as pointing out how ridiculous religion can often times be. Are our belief systems really worth killing over? Where Do We Go Now? attempts to show us what could be done if we learned to accept each other despite the  unimportant differences.