“Caramel,” a gentle drama about the denizens of a Beirut beauty salon, is named after the melted goo favored for hair removal in Middle Eastern countries. This twist (ouch!) on a process also well-known in the West neatly signals the distinctive cultural forces at work behind the characters’ romantic woes. They face recognizable pressures to look good, keep quiet, be perfect, but we sense that these age-old traps are a bit more treacherous in Lebanese society.

For example, Layale, the striking, stubborn woman who runs the shop, is tormented by her affair with a selfish married man who treats her as an on-demand resource. But, adding another layer to her dependence, the 30-year-old still lives at home — as do most Lebanese women until marriage. And, more seriously, she must conceal her affair from her parents because of punishing sexual mores that already bedevil a soon-to-be-married friend.

Director Nadine Labaki, who also plays Layale, treats this and other strands of the film with clear-eyed compassion and good humor while staving off three-tissue weepiness and you-go-girl comebacks. The plights schematically allotted to Layale and her friends may seem to have built-in limits to their development, but Ms. Labaki doesn’t rotate subplots tiresomely or hustle anyone into welcoming arms, as an insecure filmmaker might. Though by no means great, “Caramel” has the good sense neither to tidy things up much, nor to make a big deal of that.

The women of “Caramel” work at or visit the cluttered salon, forming a community that assures us no one’s off alone crying into pillows or defined solely by what they seek. Layale’s two coworkers face opposite ends of the spectrum of social pressures: Nisrine (Yasmine Al Masri) is about to be married to a man who assumes she is a virgin, while the quiet, tomboyish Rima (Joanna Moukarzel) might be interested in women but is diffident, for lack of opportunity or freedom.

The group is rounded out by two women from earlier generations facing the problems of fulfillment. Jamale (Gisèle Aouad), a frequent client who has children and a dallying husband, frets belligerently over her age and appearance, and tries to jump-start a bit-acting career alongside prissy young things at auditions. Neighborhood friend Rose (Sihame Haddad), deep into spinsterhood and making a precarious living as a seamstress, has given over her middle age to caring for her older sister, leaving them equally isolated.

While Layale’s bind unfolds with sadly reliable and familiar heartbreak, Nisrine’s underlines that the cosmopolitan, modern setting is undergirded by draconian tradition. A Muslim in a predominantly Christian town, she goes to a plastic surgeon for what’s become a standard procedure — to stitch up her hymen. Later, her adoring mother gives her touching farewell advice before her wedding, and their vastly different appearances — gorgeous, casually stylish daughter across from matriarch in burqa — belie the strict tradition nonetheless enforced on both.

A certain impatience with the prevailing order crops up when Nisrine and her fiancé stop their car to chat after a family dinner. When a doltish cop strolls up and censures the unmarried couple for sitting in a car together, Nisrine tries to smooth over the situation with assurances that they’re moving along. But her fiancé, totally exasperated and understandably driven to sarcasm, lands the pair in the police department.

All of which may actually be surprising to viewers who expect a movie set in Beirut to be about flat-out war, especially after last summer’s flare-up. But Ms. Labaki finished shooting her film before the other sort of shooting began. Somehow, this knowledge lends an especially affecting fragility to the glowingly shot film’s gentle pleasures — Rose cautiously coming round to a gallant American client’s attentions, and Rima quietly enjoying the serene company of a beguiling young woman who keeps coming straight to her for scalp-massaging hair-washing.

“Caramel,” which was Lebanon’s Academy submission for Best Foreign Film, is Ms. Labaki’s feature-length debut. A director of music videos best known for her work with the popular Lebanese singer Nancy Ajram, she teams up here with a precisely cast lineup of nonprofessionals. Except for the purposely nerve-wracked Jamale, they give “Caramel” a casual, unaffected vibe, which well suits its realistic, win-and-lose take on the characters’ predicaments.