THE REPORTS ON SARAH AND SALEEM: An Affair To Remember

In last year’s Oscar-nominated Lebanese drama The Insult, a construction foreman’s off-hand use of the word “prick” towards a frustrated tenant escalated into a gripping courtroom drama that mirrored contemporary Middle East conflicts. Muayad Alayan’s The Reports on Sarah and Saleem progresses in a similar fashion; what begins as a simple affair between two married partners rapidly expands into political warfare, especially when reflected within the realm of the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

Don’t let it’s stiff title fool you, Alayan’s sophomore effort is focused on the discrepancy represented in the two halves of its title, The Reports and Sarah and Saleem, and how any form of familiarity – intimate, empathetic or collaborative – can be twisted or abolished once framed within an international struggle.

Star-Crossed Lovers

Parked in the midst of Jerusalem sits the delivery van of Saleem (Adeeb Safadi), whose curtained-off windows and indiscreet car decals disguise his weekly session of casual sex with Israeli cafe owner Sarah (Sivane Kretchner). Whilst their social connection might be slight – he delivers croissants to her struggling cafe – the small duration of time they share together gives them both a reprieve from their domestic difficulties.

Rami Alayen’s script adroitly establishes the two adulterers as being complete opposites, outside of their geographical and religious differences; Saleem is struggling financially, unable to maintain his household with his pregnant wife Bisa (Maisa Abd Elhadi) without the assistance of her nosy brother. On the opposite side of Jerusalem lives the more well-off Sarah, who is attempting to keep her cafe alive alongside the constant looming threat of having to uproot again thanks to her diligent IDF officer husband David (Ishai Golan).

Wanting to shake things up (again), Saleem offers to take Sarah to a bar in Bethlehem one night (the Palestinian town famous for being the birthplace of Jesus Christ), and when their flimsy cover fails, Saleem is coerced into signing a phoney document stating that their trip was a recruitment mission – Saleem as the spy recruiter and Sarah the possible double agent – which temporarily works.

Chaos arrives when an intelligence mission, coincidentally headed by David, results in the Israel Defence Forces finding the paperwork, which fingers the meek delivery driver as a political enemy, leaving Sarah to decide which side of the conflict she ultimately adopts, both within her domestic and international sensibilities.

Opposites Attract

It never quite reaches the anarchic heights of The Insult, whose courtroom dynamics results in violent riots in the streets of Lebanon, but The Reports of Sarah and Saleem makes the transition from a minor liaison evolving into a national political nightmare feel natural, imbuing it’s Romeo and Juliet premise with the correct amount of necessary relevance to the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

Both of the Alayans, Muayad’s direction and his brother’s script, refuse to reward the audience with a correct “answer” to the central controversy, permeating each of the main characters with contradictory tendencies that rebuff any surface-readings of them being purely representative figures of both Israel and Palestine.

It’s only appropriate that a film that is narratively and thematically about the intersection of opposites, would use a structure of a comparable design. It’s hefty 2 hour plus runtime can be easily divided into two halves, the first devoted to the details of their affair and ill-fated cover-up, and the back-end dealing with the tragic fallout of their revelations, which is when the titular couple’s abandoned partners really get a chance to shine.

David in particular, who registers more as a moustache than a man in his opening moments, really dismantles all of our preconceptions once given the spotlight, as Ishai Golan paints his portrayal with a dignified stoicism that steadily buys our support towards a hard man who is placed in a hard situation.

In order to properly divulge its characters and advance them through a series of tense crises, The Reports on Sarah and Saleem submits to the modern plague of over-length. Each story beat feels faintly too long, thus the pace feels quite languid when compared to the urgency of its premise and the context that surrounds it.

Sebastian Bock’s cinematography is serviceable, an expected mix of quivering handheld photography that remains with each character, drawing the audience closer as their situation worsens. All of these elements work towards a resolution that will leave observant viewers with a sense of satisfaction, refusing any traditional sense of equilibrium and balance in favour of a more potentially disruptive ideological ending.

The Reports on Sarah and Saleem: Conclusion

For all of the accusations thrown around in The Reports on Sarah and Saleem, nobody can accuse this Palestinian drama of being melodramatic, despite the easy potential for it to collapse into that easy territory, which The Insult certainly did.

Muayad Alayan renders these characters – and their dire situation – within the real, sourcing their drama from the current Israel-Palestinian conflict, which redefines its worn “illicit affair” premise into a substantially more grounded and rewarded viewing experience – this is dramatic story-telling done right.

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The Reports on Sarah and Saleem is out in select Australian cinemas and will be released US theaters on June 12, 2019. For all international release dates, see here.