'Where Do We Go Now' has women in control

Ever since the Greeks and "Lysistrata" (circa 411 BC), dramatists have been exploring the comic potential of women trying to impose peace on their men through subterfuge, skulduggery and chastity, posing the very rational suggestion that if females were in control, there'd be no war.

In "Where Do We Go Now?," director and actress Nadine Labaki makes the same point. But she is likely the first storyteller to do so via a narrative involving hashish, Ukrainian dancing girls and the Virgin Mary.

Yes, the comedy is broad. Labaki, who co-wrote the screenplay and plays a fiery Christian widow named Amal, imagines the easily imaginable. The movie takes place in an unspecified Middle Eastern village of Muslims and Christians. Its potentially peaceful coexistence is consistently disturbed by events beyond its city limits. The cycle of hostilities and escalating level of violent retribution demands action on the part of someone, even if it's the women who meet daily at Amal's cafe.

The antics range from the plausible to the ridiculous. To explain away one potential offense to local sensibilities, the mayor's wife (Yvonne Maalouf) claims an intercession by the Virgin Mary; to keep news from filtering into the village, its one crippled television is assassinated. In another sequence, a band of Ukrainian showgirls is brought in to keep the men distracted. Elsewhere, hashish and sedatives are used to keep them unconscious.

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