‘A Sad and Beautiful World’ Is Too Cloying for Comfort

A work of art bearing a title like “A Sad and Beautiful World” is bound to trade in schmaltz of one sort or another, and Cyril Aris’s new Arabic-language film is a case in point. Notwithstanding the turbulent specificity of its context, Beirut in perpetual crisis, the screenplay Mr. Aris co-wrote with Bane Fakih is some kind of conventional, a dramedy that leaves no iota of sweetness or sentimentality unmilked. It’s a confection whose constituent parts, though not without their merits, are, in the short term, cloying.In the long term, “A Sad and Beautiful World” justifies the director’s whimsy without escaping it entirely. Stick with any picture for an hour and you’ve already settled on the terms set out by the filmmaker. But when Mr. Aris errs on the side of drama over comedy he proves himself less flighty. Narrative friction, not least the unruly consequences of decisions made on the fly, adds solemnity to what is otherwise a rom-com overlaid with a dusting of magic realism.At the center of “A Sad and Beautiful World” are Nino (Hasan Akil) and Yasmina (Mounia Akl), each of whom is born at the same hospital on the same day. They later meet in elementary school, where their respective characters are portrayed by Mohamad Farhat and Alex Choueiry. The two connect after each of them is punished for unruly conduct. Yasmina’s offense is providing too much information on procreation during a class show-and-tell; Nino’s, in insisting that “the island” is a place at which all things are born and to which all things pass on. Mr. Farhat and Ms. Choueiry are soulful beyond their years. They’re made even more so by the soft-grained tonalities of Joe Saade’s cinematography, an autumnal tone that benefits from being placed in contrast to television news snippets underscoring the precarity of life in Beirut. None of which hampers an onrushing number of tried-and-true narrative tropes. The meet-cute is, in chronological terms, a re-meet cute. When an adult Nino loses control of his car, he doesn’t smash through the front window of just any business, but a business owned by Yasmina’s mother, Oumaya, played by an autocratic Julia Kassar.Having become a restaurateur, Nino offers the aggrieved party and her family a free banquet as a partial recompense for damages incurred. Don’t be fooled by the cozy environs of the eatery: Nino’s trades in artisanal offerings and extravagant idiosyncrasies, embodied by a headstrong chef, Chafic (a girthy and grumpy Tino Karam), and his wife, a downcast but determined Leila (Nadyn Chalhoub). To Chafic’s ire, Oumaya’s brood have undiscriminating palettes: The more hot sauce the better with this crowd. The exception is a brooding high-powered vegetarian daughter. Guess who.Rest assured, two intractable temperaments will fall deeply and truly and forever in love. It’s only when the untenability of the country’s political situation places the family, the business and a child in jeopardy that “A Sad and Beautiful World” gains in grit and grace. Mr. Aris doesn’t altogether abandon bromides. The last refuge of a sentimentalist is, it seems, CGI of dubious quality and, with it, mystical yearnings that put paid to the hardships laid out in the film. Still, the cast is altogether winning with Ms. Akl and Mr. Karam being especially dynamic. If the director is prone to the maudlin he also has a keen eye for detail, particularly in terms of character. A bit of vinegar in the schmaltz would do Mr. Aris well going into the future.

‘A Sad and Beautiful World’ Is Too Cloying for Comfort

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