Nino and Yasmina occupy almost every frame in Lebanese filmmaker Cyril Aris’s debut feature A Sad and Beautiful World, just as expected in a romantic drama. It begins right from the opening sequence of their birth, a few minutes apart, in a hospital in Beirut. But by the end of the film, one gets a sense of what it is to be living in a region constantly mired in conflicts, where your life carefully built over decades can fall apart any moment.
Conflicts frame every major juncture in their life. The moment they open their eyes, the hospital in which they are admitted gets bombed, in a scene which immediately brings to mind the state of hospitals in present-day Gaza. Their childhood friendship is cut short by another spate of violent attacks from Israel. Decades later, they recognise each other amid a more local conflict between their family and friends.
But these violent events, which make a deep impression in our minds, appear on the screen only for a few fleeting moments. The rest of the time, we are immersed in the world of Nino and Yasmina, just like how they are immersed in each other’s worlds. It is what could have become a straightforward love story with all the usual conflicts that can happen in one. Yet, in Aris’s telling, it takes some exquisite turns in craft and narrative, which one would not normally expect from a debutant filmmaker.
