Dabis leads a fantastic group of actors playing May, a recently engaged novelist who returns to her home country of Jordan to be married to her fiance, Ziad. She is reacquainted with her sisters Yasmine and Dahlia, and her conservative Catholic mother Nadine (Hiam Abbass). Her mother disapproves of the marriage due to Ziad being Moslem, but that is only the beginning of the story as May is unsure whether she wants to go through with the marriage anyway.
Right off the bat we are presented with several issues of religion, nationality and what it matrimony means to us in post-modern, leisure driven world. It is compounded by the fact that May and her sisters are half-Jordanian, half-American, with their father (Bill Pullman) being an American diplomat, divorced from their mother and with a new Indian wife. Dabis is half-American as well, and this is her somewhat biographical look at what it means to be considered American primarily, when we as Americans would consider her to be Middle Eastern.
On top of this, each of her sisters as well as her mother and her father's mistress all have issues of their own. These range from infidelity to parental estrangement to sexual identity. And greater in scope is the recurring reminder that amidst the conflict of Westernization of Jordan, with its American-style nightclubs and resorts contrasted with what May describes as a rise in "ninjas" (women in burqas), there is the peppering of a political dimension where the film reminds us that a mine-studded Red Sea is the only thing keeping many Palestinians out of Jordan.
There are quite obviously a lot of plots and subplots, arguably too many, but never once did I feel overwhelmed by the content. From my description it also makes the film sound like a heavy handed drama which I am happy to say it is not. At times it is very dramatic and I wouldn't blame anyone for crying. Some of the topics faced are extremely taught with emotion, but at the onset I fully expected this to be a soppy chick-flick about three sisters who have some problems to overcome, but with their girl power make it through all right.
It does begin that way and throughout the film remains very funny and very charming. As the layers begin to add up, however, it becomes clear how rich and complex and heartfelt a film this actually is. Dabis spent years writing the screenplay which is fraught with so many interesting ideas and funny lines and situations. But there is heart behind it, largely in part because so much of it is her own story and the story of her family.
Despite being a great writer Dabis is gorgeous and a gifted actress, commanding the screen with steady eyes and a mature heart. I did not learn the name of the actress, but the woman playing her sister Dahlia was also a standout as a rude, crude, larger than life spirit.
I don't expect that many critics will like this film. I imagine they will probably think it a bit trite and directionless, not veering either dramatic or comedic enough and not intellectually stimulating enough to encompass all that it does. Pooh pooh on them, I say. I sat with an audience of 500 and there was an electric energy watching this film. People were glued to the screen and absolutely absorbed in what they were watching. There was enormous applause for the three leads when they came on to the stage afterwards, and coming from a bunch of snobs like myself I think that says something. I don't think a film like this is trying to please a bunch of leftist intellectuals. This is a movie that was written from a deep place where Dabis keeps her love and that reached out and touched the audience. If there is one film that you watch from the festival this year, make sure it is this one.
4/4
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