A PERFECT DAY

Lebanon, 2005, 88 minutes, Colour.
Ziad Saad, Julia Kassar, Julia Kahwagi.
Directed by Joana Hadji , Thomas Khalil Joreige.

A Perfect Day offers the opportunity for its audience to enter into Beirut, understand something of the past, the challenges of the present – and as the history of 2006 provided, the dangers for the future.

A mother certifies that her husband disappeared during the civil war fifteen years earlier. Her son walks through the streets of Beirut, searching for his former girlfriend. This gives the opportunity for a portrait of characters as well as a meditation on the details of life in Beirut and what the Lebanese people have suffered – and hope for.

1. A reflection of life in Beirut at the beginning of the 21st century? The memories of the civil war? A stagnation for those who are caught in the memories and are unable to move on? The younger generation who do not remember the war so well? Rebuilding Lebanon?

2. The Lebanese locations, the city of Beirut, the streets and the traffic jams, homes, clubs? The picture of Beirut after the civil war? The musical score?

3. The title, the structure of the film over twenty-four hours? The perfect day to accept that the mother’s husband was actually missing and officially dead?

4. The focus on mother and son, Malek at twenty-five, living with his mother? The connection between them, the grief, the disappearance of the father? The fifteen years’ absence? Malek as the only child, his mother as over-protective, continually phoning him? Her belief that the father could come back, Malek not believing this? The tension all day of his relationship with his mother, the phone calls, going in and out of the house, going to the lawyer’s? His relationship with his girlfriend, her calling things off, not wanting to see him? In the traffic jam? His going to the club despite her message? Her friend warning him off, the girl and the relationship between them, their kissing in the club, in the car? Her suddenly getting out and saying that it could not work? Malek’s work, going to the construction site, finding the body and his getting the authorities to identify it? His going to the lawyer’s, with the his mother, the documents, the lawyer having to photocopy the documents so they both could sign at the same time? His having the newspaper articles about his father’s disappearance and reading them in his room? The fact of his narcolepsy, falling asleep at all times, including at the car wheel? The return home to his mother? Driving with his girlfriend’s contact lenses and everything being blurry? His being a symbol of his generation, restless, yet narcoleptic, involved in reconstruction but unable to relate, blurred vision?

5. The portrait of Claudia, her age, the disappearance of her husband, not able to accept it, her grief? Protective of her son, over-mothering him? The continued phone calls? Her reaction to his avoiding her, his slipping out of the house and then going back, her calling him ten times? Going to the lawyer’s, her moods? The signing, wanting to go back on it? Looking in his room for the documents? Finding the gun, his finding the gun and keeping it in his room? Nothing dramatic happening with the gun? Her being alone?

6. The girlfriend, the relationship, calling it off, seeing no future, at the club, dancing and kissing, in the car, leaving her contact lenses, leaving him?

7. The building site, the day-by-day realism of the reconstruction of Beirut? Finding the corpse buried in the foundations?

8. The clubs, the music, the dance, the escape?

9. The lawyer, the details of the law, information about missing persons to be declared dead, the inheritance?

10. The film an its inviting its audiences to reflect about civil war and about the Lebanese situation?