The Beauty Academy of Kabul 2004 United States, Liz Mermin.

You don't necessarily need an "interesting" subject to make a good, thought-provoking film. Directors like Jim Jarmusch and Todd Solondz have made entire careers out of documenting the mundane details of modern life.

But a good subject, provided it's treated competently, can redeem an otherwise unexceptional film. Thus is the case with Liz Mermin's documentary The Beauty Academy of Kabul.

Mermin chronicles the efforts of six Western hairdressers, including three Afghan expatriates, to start a beauty school in the war-torn capital of Afghanistan. The action unfolds over three months in 2003 and follows the school's first graduating class, beginning a few days before the school opens and ending with a graduation dinner.

The film begins in earnest following a black-and-white newsreel-style primer on the recent history of Afghanistan that focuses on the wars that have almost unabatedly ravaged the country since the Soviet occupation in 1979. It includes interviews with the teachers (shot at the school) and some of the students (shot in their homes), footage of class in progress, and some scenes in which the Westerners explore the city.

The tech credits are fine, despite what must have been difficult circumstances. Lynda Hall's cinematography, including both day and nighttime scenes, is clean and crisp, and a lively Middle Eastern score complements it nicely. Unfortunately the film is hurt by its lack of focus, point-of-view, or discernable style.

It's only 74-minutes long, and because there are six teachers working in three-week shifts each (two at a time) it seems like there is always someone arriving and someone leaving. By choosing to film each teacher's hello and farewell address Mermin leaves herself no time to allow us to develop a feel for the pace or the character of a typical class.

This also shifts attention away from the Afghan women enrolled in the class to the Western women teaching it. Mermin tries to counter this by interviewing some of the Afghan women in their homes. This creates a new problem, though: the women she interviews inevitably seem extremely nervous and ill at ease.

The cameras are always accompanied by at least one of the school's teachers, and the discomfort that hosting a film crew causes these women is further compounded by the strangeness of having their teachers in their home and by their confrontational questions. In one scene they ask a student if she thinks that women will ever have political power in Afghanistan. She answers in the negative, and the awkward silence with which this is met prompts her to ask, "Was my answer wrong?"

In another scene Debbie, the "crazy American" in the group, decides that she's going to teach some of her students how to drive. She's tickled by the amount of attention that she generates (people point and laugh) as she navigates the streets of Kabul: "They've probably never seen a women driving before!"