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In 'Beauty Academy,' political change starts in the salon

There's a surprising lack of editorializing in the documentary "The Beauty Academy of Kabul," which depicts a scene likely to inspire mixed feelings. Going in, viewers might not know whether to expect sarcasm or sympathy. After the credits roll, they still might be unsure just what filmmaker Liz Mermin thinks of her subjects. But they will have seen something pretty interesting.

Shadow Distribution 'The Beauty Academy of Kabul' 3 out of 5 stars The verdict: A fresh look at change in Afghanistan through some interesting people. Director: Liz Mermin Starring: Mary MacMakin, Terri Grauel, Patricia O'Connor Run time: 74 minutes Release date: March 24, 2006 Rating: Not rated; contains references to war violence and images of guns. On the web Official movie site Rate 'The Beauty Academy of Kabul'   Go see it   Make it a matinee   Wait to rent   Don't bother Voter Limit: Once per Hour View Poll Results

The situation: In 2003, a group of Americans — some native and some who emigrated from Afghanistan during Soviet occupation or Taliban rule — visit the ruined Kabul to give a peculiar kind of aid. They will train women to be beauticians.

As a brief historical montage shows us, Afghanistan in the '70s was a land where Western fashions were embraced. (One interviewee remembers a time when women had good jobs and short skirts). But where do perms and eyebrow waxing rank among the basic human rights that Afghanistan's women need to reclaim?

According to the volunteers of "Beauty Without Borders," pretty high. "You are going to play a very important role in healing this city," one says with evangelistic surety. Another, an abrasive woman with spiky red-dyed hair, insists that her students have a moral imperative to inflict the outside world's latest trends on their customers.

But if the instructors are sometimes allowed to make themselves look foolish (albeit good-heartedly so), there does seem to be something to their message. As we learn from the students, clandestine hair-cutting was a form of civil disobedience during the Taliban days. Women set up shop in their homes, primping friends who would hide their 'dos under burkas. Now that it's legal, opening a salon affords women the chance to provide for families while their husbands struggle to find work.

The opportunity to meet these women is the film's main draw. Not only do they offer a fresh account of their nation's long nightmare, giving first-person life to what most Americans know only from wartime news reports, they provide a glimpse of how a soul might survive such circumstances. It's unsettling to see their calm — their smiles, even — as they recall seeing their neighbors beaten and set on fire for violations of Taliban propriety, or when they acknowledge the limits on self-determination that remain today.

Women who have seen what they have, you might find yourself thinking, have earned the right to decide for themselves whether mascara and hairspray are foreign frivolities or one step on the path to a better life.