DVD Review: ‘Amreeka’ Balances Genuine Warmth with Obvious Clichés

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CHICAGO – Nominating Cherien Dabis’s “Amreeka” for an Independent Spirit Award is sort of redundant, since the film has, in a sense, been nominated many times before. The film will only seem original to audiences unfamiliar with “The Visitor,” “Real Women Have Curves,” and “Crash” (and no, I’m not referring to the one about James Spader’s fetish for car accidents).

Yet, for all its inherent predictability, “Amreeka” nearly manages to work in spite of itself. It tells the story of a single mother, Muna (Nisreen Faour), living with her teenage son, Fadi (Melkar Muallem), in the Palestinian city of Ramallah. They live under the surveillance of Israeli authorities while attempting to cross the border. When Muna finally receives her visa to the US, it seems as if her ticket to freedom has finally arrived.

DVD Rating: 3.0/5.0

Muna and Fadi land in a Chicago airport on the same day that US troops invade Iraq. After moving in with Muna’s sister (Hiam Abbass) and family, writer/director Dabis follows the immigrants as they adjust to suburban life. This is the type of film where a director’s commentary isn’t necessary, since the personal sociopolitical views of the filmmaker are underlined, highlighted and circled in every scene. When Fadi shows up for his first day of school, he’s immediately mistaken for an Iraqi, and the ignorance-fueled racism begins. When Muna asks a young man why he dyes his hair and pierces his lip, he responds, “Why would I want to be like everyone else?” Subtlety is clearly not Dabis’s strong point.

Nisreen Faour and Hiam Abbass discuss the troubles of living in America in Cherien Dabis’s Amreeka.
Photo credit: Virgil Films Entertainment

What’s best about the film are the performances by Faour and Muallem, who beautifully capture the dynamics of a tight-knit parent/child relationship destined to unravel. Faour is enormously sympathetic as she tries to navigate her way through a land that proves to be as unwelcoming as her home country. She also a exudes a curiously childlike naiveté as she attempts to fool her sister into believing that she’s found work at a bank, rather than the nearby White Castle. I must give the restaurant chain props for once again willfully representing the ugly American stereotype of consumerist indulgence. Though Muna doesn’t share Harold and Kumar’s craving for fast food, she does weigh the approximate amount of a regular White Castle customer, inspiring her niece’s priceless line, “Everyone’s fat in America. You’ll fit in!”

Amreeka was released on DVD on January 12th, 2010. Photo credit: Virgil Films Entertainment

The resoundingly positive human message of “Amreeka” makes its contrivances somewhat easier to bear, though its subject matter deserved a less formulaic approach. Muna develops a tender friendship with a professor (Joseph Ziegler) who is a dead ringer for Richard Jenkins in “The Visitor,” all the way down to his bookish appearance and outsider status. His final act confrontation with the police is so reminiscent of Jenkins’s film that it practically feels like plagiarism. The protagonists’ encounters with prejudice sometimes feel like a recycled subplot from “Crash,” as Dabis illustrates how violence can be the direct result of cultural ignorance. And when Muna embraces her hefty body type by declaring, “This is me,” she proves that Real Arabs Have Curves.

It’s somewhat disappointing that a film this derivative would receive a Best Picture nomination from the Independent Spirit Awards, while a vastly more authentic immigration drama like Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden’s “Sugar” merely gets a screenplay nod. “Amreeka” is a lovely, well-meaning film with a story that’s important to tell, despite the fact that it’s been told before.

“Amreeka” is presented in its 2.35:1 aspect ratio, and doesn’t include any optional subtitles or audio tracks. For a film about communication between cultures, this is an ironic omission. The best extra is Dabis’s twelve-minute short, “Make a Wish,” which plays like a first-rate student film, as it builds to a heartrending twist ending. There’s also a couple minutes of deleted scenes (expanding on discarded subplots) and outtakes.

By MATT FAGERHOLM Staff Writer HollywoodChicago.com matt@hollywoodchicago.com