Adapting to a new environment is a well-worn plot line for movies, but the story is rarely as immediate as in "Amreeka," which opens today. In a nutshell, it's the tale of a Palestinian Arab woman, a Christian, who gets the chance to come to the United States just as President George W. Bush is ramping up the country to invade Iraq, the so-called "Operation Iraqi Freedom."
Muna Farah (an excellent Nisreen Faour), whose husband left her for a younger–and slimmer–woman, takes her 16-year-old son, Fadi, and heads for the airport. At a highway checkpoint, they are stopped, questioned and humiliated by Israeli soldiers as writer-director Cherien Dabis makes a point we won't understand until the plane lands in Chicago and TSA agents put them through a very similar process.
Farah is met by her sister, Raghda Halaby, married to a doctor and living in a far-west suburb for 15 years with their two daughters, the eldest of whom, Salma, is in the same class as her cousin Fadi. Muna, who worked in a bank in Jerusalem, expects to stay in the U.S. long enough for her son to finish college, and seeks a similar job. But with a faltering economy and some difficulty with English, she suffers a series of disappointments and finally ends up in a White Castle. Her pride is such that she does not tell her sister the truth, but is dropped off at a bank next door.
Dabis makes another statement with a sign in front of the restaurant with a typo that makes it read, "Support Our Oops."
"Amreeka," which is the Arabic pronunciation of "America," is a rather slight and predictable film, with the predictable teenage misbehavior, but the acting is good, and the simple story offers us the opportunity to walk in someone else's shoes for 97 minutes.
Opens today at the Plaza Frontenac
–Joe