Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Beirut Hotel (review) - بيروت بالليل

Trailer for "Beirut Hotel"

Lebanese audience watched this feature in defiance to the infamous ban that is imposed, and proved that such censorship is rather meaningless in a connected world. Arte channel, a main contributor to the movie, screened Beirut Hotel earlier in January. The movie was scheduled to be released in Lebanese theaters prior to the TV release, but the ban prevented this from happening. The movie is carefully made, and it was selected for many festivals, there is no clear reason why it wasn't selected for Cannes this year although it was supported by "The Atelier". The actress Hamze was playing one of her best roles in her career, thanks to Arbid's direction. Nevertheless, few problems arose related to the erotic scenes in the original trailer. Overall, Arbid is proving once more her great talent by a successful third movie attracting audience (Western and Arabs). The plot revolves around a love affair intersecting with a spy story. As in her previous movie, the main cast is divided between a French actor, and an Arab one. They met by chance, and the French begin stalking the Arab until they bond together. The cinematography is rather eye-candy, revealing an appealing Beirut in a colorful picture. The unfortunate ban have contributed to raising awareness among the population and promoting the movie (approximately 1.5 million watched the TV release including 700,000 in France alone + 34,000 on the web). The last chance to watch Beirut Hotel on arte is scheduled on February 4th 01:40 GMT+1.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Carefully made? whats the carefully made in it? the acting? the scenario? the intrigue? wtf...r u kidding us?
what the heck is intriguing in this love story? is it the 3 sex scenes which are not justified at all? I think arbid wanted to prove that she can do a movie (well actually another movie) containing sex scenes...Moreover, i found the sex scenes not attractive at all...
The first 45 mins of the movie are very plain, no drama, no tension, only redundancies in the actions and dialogues...

P.S: i dont care how many millions watched it...its still a very very bad movie.

Lebanese said...

@Anonymous Carefully made indeed. It requires a good director to be able to bring to the screen a faithful depiction on the Lebanese society, without any phony or unnatural additions. As of the erotic scenes, some might feel offended, but as any artistic subject, it's a matter of taste.

Anonymous said...

Is it true that she was born next to the Jupiter Temples of the Roman Empire Ruins in Baalbek and the mountains of ''Souk Al Ghareb''? If that's true, it would be really interesting!

Read that information on her Katagogi Profile