May 2006 | Whole Life Review
Reel Power
The Beauty Academy of Kabul
Directed by Liz Mermin
Produced by Nigel Noble & Liz Mermin
Opens April 28 at the Nuart in LA
At first it sounded almost like a joke: New York hairdressers opening a beauty school in Afghanistan? “It instantly jumped out as completely insane,” said filmmaker Liz Mermin, who read a newspaper story about the project—and then promptly decided to make a movie about it. “How could there not be a story here?” There turned out to be many stories—not only of the American hairdressers (three were Afghan refugees returning for the first time) or the first 20 students, but also of women in Afghanistan, of cultures colliding and changing, of history, of politics, of civil war. Beauty Academy of Kabul only skims most of these themes, without alighting on any particular one. Mermin skips conventional techniques—no narrator voiceovers, dramatic music or obvious political agendas here—instead allowing intimate footage taken at the school, students’ homes and on Kabul’s streets to tell the story of the school’s first three months. The method works. The film is compelling and makes us care about the characters. But it also raises more questions than it answers, which is why it’s good at 74 minutes, but would make an even better mini-series. No such thing in the works, but Mermin promises, “The DVD extras are going to be amazing.”
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