Parental themes seem to be stacking festival line-ups these days and it is the rare competition that doesn’t include several dramas about moms or dads trying to understand and relate to their offspring. In Bassem Breche’s poetic Riverbed, it is a mother who shuts out her daughter emotionally, until a dramatic event offers them a chance to start over. Using a minimum of dialogue and trusting in Nadim Saoma’s superb painterly images to set the mood, the film has so little narrative development, and such an abrupt ending, that it often feels like a character sketch.
This brooding drama (though elements of dry comedy appear here and there) is tenuously embodied by Lebanese actress and producer Carole Abboud (Terra Incognita, Guardians of Time Lost), who won the best acting performance award in Cairo’s Horizons of Arab Cinema section where the film premiered. As the flinty Salma, living on her own in a mountain village in Mount Lebanon, she is used to setting narrow boundaries in her relationships, and her life seems depressingly arid and routine.
From her spacious house, she works as the town telephone operator at an old-time switchboard, which goes a long way to showing how backwards the village is. Every morning two old biddies arrive with their maté tea and plunk themselves down on her divan to gossip about the sinful goings-on in town and find out who’s calling who. Their presence has some of the wry small-town humor found in the Palestine-shot films of Elia Suleiman, a director Breche clearly admires, though judging by Riverbed, he is far from a natural comic director.
Although there are almost no men in the village (never explained), Salma has one: a shopkeeper (Rabih El Zahr) whose store she can see from her porch. They go to elaborate lengths to keep their romance secret and (as he warns) avoid a scandal (he seems to be married.) Driving to remote rendezvous points in his car, Salma smiles like she means it – her billowing summer dresses, bright make-up and body language all cry freedom. But when they’re done and enjoying the spectacular views, her mood changes back.
It’s half-way through the film before another key character arrives on the scene: her 20-ish daughter Thuraya (played by recording artist Omaya Malaeb). She opens the front door with her key while Salma is out and falls asleep on the bed face down, only to awaken with her mother aiming a gun at her. Realizing her mistake, Salma shrugs. She is really not happy to have company.
Thuraya is recently divorced and, as we gather from a phone call she makes to a friend, pregnant. The screenplay cowritten by Breche and veteran director Ghassan Salhab can be perversely reticent in giving out information through dialogue, and the viewer is left to assemble offhand clues to figure out what is happening, while Salma and her daughter give each other the silent treatment. The fact that Breche himself is a scriptwriter (he wrote the Emmy Award-winning web series Shankaboot) may explain why he chooses to experiment with such an unnatural choice, trusting in expressive cinematography and camerawork and above all the ability of his two leading actresses to communicate without words.
Also very modern and essential is Rana Sabbagha’s editing, which maybe strays over the line in the extremely abrupt ending. The final scene, which is graphic enough to upset some viewers, is a huge crisis in which life itself is at stake, as well as the future relationship between the two women. While it’s true these questions are answered in a few deft shots, there is a world of implications that are left hanging uneasily in the balance, making the film feel incomplete.
Director: Bassam Breche
Screenplay: Ghassan Salhab, Bassem Breche
Cast: Carole Abboud, Omaya Malaeb, Ghassan Salhab
Producer: Jana Wehbe
Cinematography: Nadim Saoma
Production design: Wael Boutros
Editing: Rana Sabbagha
Music: Sharif Sehnaoui
Production companies: The Attic Productions (Lebanon), Metafora (Qatar)
Venue: Cairo Film Festival (Horizons of Arab Cinema competition)
In Arabic
78 minutes
