A Frown Gone Mad

Botox, Revolax, Sculptra, Hyaron, Juvederm: all sorts of products—perhaps not all entirely legal—sell like hot cakes in Bouba’s Lebanese beauty salon. Skillfully, though not always gently, she jabs a constant stream of clients with all kinds of injectables to temporarily reduce their facial wrinkles and frown lines.

Director Omar Mismar films the patients from a fixed position as they recline on the white plastic-wrapped treatment table. Young and old, women and men, from housewives to hip influencers—it seems like the whole country is voluntarily undergoing these painful and gory treatments, all of which are shown in close-up.

During the treatment, the threat of war is a regular topic. Will war break out? Will you go and fight? Mixed-up memories about wars or explosions reveal how, already for decades now, violence has been an almost constant presence in the lives of Beirut’s inhabitants. Bouba’s medicine is rough humor and a magic injection. As one customer aptly puts it: “Most people in line here are tired and unhappy. Bouba takes the pain from inside and works on it from the outside.”