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| Jocelyne Saab: // غزل البنات // Ghazl el-banat / L’Adolescente sucre d’amour / The Razor’s Edge (LB/FR 1985). |
// غزل البنات // L’Adolescente sucre d’amour / Une vie suspendue / A Suspended Life.
LB/FR 1985. Prod.: Aleph Production, Balcon Production, Cinévidéo.
Director: Jocelyne Saab. Scen.: Gérard Brach, Jocelyne Saab, Samir Sayegh. F.: Claude La Rue – colour. M.: Philippe Gosselet. Mus.: Siegfried Kessler. Int.: Jacques Weber (Karim), Hala Bassam (Samar), Juliet Berto (Juliette), Ali Diab (father), Denise Filiatrault (mother), Khaled El Sayed (one-eyed man).
Loc: Beirut.
Languages: Arabic and French.
102 min
DCP from Association Jocelyne Saab.
Restored in 4K in 2025 by Association Jocelyne Saab in collaboration with Cinémathèque suisse and La Cinémathèque québécoise at Cinémathèque suisse and Association Jocelyne Saab laboratories, from the positive preservation copy of the original cut presented at Cannes in 1985. Funding provided by Association Jocelyne Saab and Nessim Ricardou-Saab.
Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna 2025: Cinemalibero.
Introduced by Mathilde Rouxel (Association Jocelyne Saab) and Cecilia Cenciarelli.
Viewed with e-subtitles in English and Italian by Chiara Belluzzi, viewed at Cinema Jolly, 21 June 2025.
Mathilde Rouxel (Bologna 2025): "Jocelyne Saab became a journalist because she couldn’t go to film school and wanted to create images. It was when she started working for French television that she picked up a camera, after a brief stint at Télé-Liban, where she produced two reports that have now disappeared."
"In the early 1970s, her interest in fiction led her to write screenplays, and one story in particular kept her busy: that of Beirut, and of life despite the war. The script for Ghazl el-banat went through several versions and the filmmaker teamed up with a Canadian production company. Saab finally enlisted the services of French screenwriter Gérard Brach for the final version."
"Her first location scouting photos were taken in her house, the same one that appears burnt down in one of her most poignant documentaries, Beirut My City (1982). Having planned to shoot the film as early as 1978, learning alongside Farouk Beloufa on the set of Nahla (1979) and with Volker Schlöndorff on the set of The Circle of Deceit (1981), Saab finally had to return to Beirut, having stopped documenting the war, to tell a story of platonic love between a young refugee from southern Lebanon and a bourgeois painter depressed by the political situation."
"The film traverses spaces that have now disappeared, takes us into some of Beirut’s most sumptuous palaces, and tells us about the war from the point of view of those who inhabit it. Saab convinced French actors Jacques Weber and Juliet Berto to take part in the adventure."
"The film was shown at the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight in 1985 under the title L’Adolescente, sucre d’amour (The Razor’s Edge). It was reedited for its brief theatrical release in 1988, under the title A Suspended Life: for lack of money, Saab made the cuts to the distribution copy."
"All the prints we’ve found are different from one another. At the end of her life, Jocelyne Saab mourned her original version, which she felt was more “naive but sincere”."
"This restoration was carried out in Beirut from the 35 mm positive conservation print belonging to the Canadian production company that supported the film, held at the Cinémathèque québécoise and digitised by the Cinémathèque suisse." Mathilde Rouxel
AA: The first film I saw, Ghazl el-banat / The Razor's Edge (Lebanon 1985) by Jocelyne Saab (1948–2019), took my breath away and became my favourite at the 2025 Il Cinema Ritrovato.
We saw the original version, lovingly restored this year. The movie is colour-driven and image-driven, and a mesmerizing quality of colour temperatures has been impressively preserved in the restoration.
The genius loci is overwhelming. A high intensity of presence is established instantly and sustained all through the story of the young girl Samar (Hala Bassam) in transition from childhood to womanhood, a refugee from Southern Lebanon, growing up in Beirut in the shadow of the war.
Her main bond is with the artist Karim (Jacques Weber). It is not a physical love story, but a profound tale of a meeting of souls. Art is all important, from Egyptian movies to the theatre, from fine arts to the performances of an old musician.
The soundtrack is enchanting, inseparable from the sound of the city. The music ranges from the indigenous to European classics, including Carmen by Bizet and Don Giovanni by Mozart.
Jocelyne Saab finds an original and personal approach to imagery. The mise-en-scène is constantly inventive, the approach that of imagist poetry. Memorable images include the lighthouse with the thousand mirrors of the Fresnel lens and the roof terrace. We witness the war as theatre and the theatre as war.
Ghazl el-banat is both epic and lyrical. From realism is but a step to surrealism. Jocelyne Saab is never escapist. The film is art-driven, and art is a way to transcend the atrocity of the war. Art elevates. Our spirit runs high while our physical presence is near horror and death. Bullets hit Karim for one last fatal time. Why has the day turned into night?
We are left with an all-encompassing sense of miraculous intensity. It is the spirit of a people who will never perish.
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