Australian
Screen

Clip description

Tarek (Les Chantery) and Nabil (Buddy Dannoun) buy drinks for two glamorous Caucasian Australian women in a trendy inner-city nightclub, but their attempts at small-talk are strained, especially when it comes to the subject of their Lebanese Muslim heritage. Later, on the street, Tarek tells Nabil that the blonde, Amie (Rachael Taylor), has given him her business card. Nabil tells Tarek that they need cocaine to impress young women like these.

Curator’s notes

The scene addresses directly one of the film’s major themes – the desire by some young men from the Muslim Lebanese-Australian community to transcend their perceived status as outsiders. More specifically it shows the cultural tensions arising from being western suburbs Lebanese Australian boys in the trendy, aspirational world of the inner-city nightclub. The girls’ inquiries about their background are innocent enough but the way the boys bristle and lie in reply indicates an acute self-consciousness about what they feel to be their inferior status in white Anglo society. Amie shows enough interest in Tarek to indicate he might be in with a chance, thus tempting him into wanting to impress her further.

In plotting terms, the scene depicts Tarek gaining motivation to change his mind and join Nabil’s hare-brained scheme to rob a suspected drug dealer’s flat (see clip one). One small detail will later prove to be significant: Amie calls the boys ‘youse’, a working-class term that jibes with her stated middle-class profession of interior designer. Writer-director Serhat Caradee is providing a subtle hint that not everything she says is to be taken at face value.