Sexually confronting, Lipstikka is a thought-provoking tale of friendship, love and the unreliability of memory.
Cold, matter-of-fact Lara sits on her couch on the evening of her birthday. Husband Michael sits next to her, friends pour drinks and present a home-baked birthday cake.
In voice-over, we learn that Lara knows Michael is having an affair and that they have slept in separate beds since their wedding. A recent move to a larger London house means they now have separate rooms.
So begins Lipstikka, a challenging, sexually confronting psychological drama of friendship, unreciprocated love and the unreliability of childhood memories that haunt adult life.
Lara and Inam
The morning after the birthday, Michael has gone to test drive the latest Porsche and, after dropping off seven year-old James at school, Lara must wait in her clinically clean home for the man who will fix the dishwasher. But a ring on the doorbell changes all that.
Standing in front of Lara is her childhood friend Inam, a wholly unexpected visitor and one who is obviously not particularly welcome.
As best friends at school in Ramallah in the Palestinian Authority, the two girls were inseparable. The sexually active young Inam led her younger friend into numerous scrapes and near misses. But one particular evening, breaking the imposed military curfew and sneaking into off-limits Jerusalem to see a movie, they find themselves in a place and time totally outside their control.
Years later, the two meet, their level of friendship obviously in a very different place. Sponsored, they both studied in the UK but the intense love and deep intimacy Lara feels for Inam is not reciprocated.
The free-spirited Inam recalls their past together in a very different light - remembering Lara as a girl who idolised her own liberated behaviour and who chose to watch Inam’s sexual exploits rather than join in.
But it is the shared memories, both in Ramallah and their early days in London, which create a strong emotional bond. Those memories may be distorted by time and place, but they are nevertheless powerful in their hold on the two women.
An unexpected denouement, however, twists the differing truths we have been presented with in the previous 85 minutes.
Award-winning performances
The power of Lipstikka lies with the extraordinarily sensitive performances by the lead actresses – all four of them. Clara Khoury as the uptight Lara in a loveless marriage conveys a deep level of pain and suffering behind her carefully composed exterior. Nataly Atiya as Inam still seems to be like a free-spirited teenager – yet the reality is she is so much more fragile than her friend. Both Ziv Weiner and Moran Rosenblatt as the younger teenagers provide beautifully paced and wholly believable performances.
Lipstikka will undoubtedly offend many. Politically, the representation of an Israeli soldier (shown from two different perspectives) as a rapist will not be appreciated by Israelis. The sexually liberated, non-conformist female characters will offend traditionalists of Palestinian culture.
There is also both male and female nudity alongside scenes of a sexual nature.
It is an intriguing sophomore feature from Canadian-born director Jonathan Sagall, his first since his award-winning 1999 debut, Urban Feel. Like his earlier film, Lipstikka is a film of fractured memories, sexual misadventure, illusory love and the healing power of pain.
Personal rating: 3.5 stars
Lipstikka
- Directed by Jonathan Sagall (Urban Feel, Baba-It – short film)
- Written by Jonathan Sagall (Urban Feel, Baba-It – short film)
- Produced by Guy Allon, Jonathan Sagall (Urban Feel, Baba-It – short film)
- Starring Clara Khoury (The Syrian Bride, Body of Lies), Nataly Atiya (Honour, Day After Day), Ziv Weiner, Moran Rosenblatt
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