Programmer's Note

Memory is a mutable thing. If two people share an experience and then years later finally speak of it again, whose version of events is the truest?

This question is only one of many that writer/director Jonathan Sagall grapples with in Lipstikka, a beautifully attenuated drama about love, sex, memory and the tangled bonds of female friendship.

Set primarily in London, the film opens with Lara (Clara Khoury, The Syrian Bride), a petite, doe-eyed, upper-middle-class British housewife with a clutter-free modern home, an accomplished, handsome husband, and an easy-to-reach bottle of vodka at the back of the cupboard. One morning Lara is paid a surprise visit from Inam (Nataly Attiya, Yom Yom), her childhood friend and fellow immigrant to England. Blowsy, erratic and intrusive, Inam takes only minutes to stomp all over Lara’s immaculate house and tightly controlled life, and it becomes clear there is history and drama between these two women.

This volcanic backstory is told through a series of compelling flashbacks, interspersed throughout the course of the day of Inam’s arrival. The defining event of this shared past, which took place mainly in Ramallah, is revisited several times via their divergent perspectives, and we come to understand how the aftershocks settled in completely different ways for each of them. As the film progresses, so does the tension and suspense stemming from each newly revealed memory — right up until the last scene, which provides one final, unnerving insight into the nature of their relationship.

Photographed in a muted colour palette and featuring numerous close-ups that further charge the intimate nature of the story, Sagall’s harnessing of Khoury and Attiya’s exceptionally nuanced performances is matched only by his spare, elegant script. Gripping and deeply intelligent, Lipstikka’s resonances will linger long, though its questions are perhaps unanswerable.