Fremont Movie Review: Surprising Refugee Comedy Drama Is A Thing Of Wonder
Interesting. Half too crazy. I think I've covered Babek Jalali's indie comedy drama. But midway through the Iranian-British director's fourth film, things take a turn for the better. Fremont, the story of an Afghan refugee and his hunger for love, is not as interesting as Céline Song's quite interesting past life. However, if the audience was strapped to a cryometer, they would get high marks (for causing tears of joy). I'm jealous that someone is seeing this for the first time.
Donya (Anaita Vali Zada), who used to be a translator for the US military in Kabul, is an insomniac, intolerant of nervous men (she also doesn't like cockroaches). Although he lived in Fremont in the Bay Area, he worked in the family factory in San Francisco and, after a hasty breakthrough, created the banal "assets" found in Chinese restaurant pastries.
If you ask yourself, “Who wrote this?” if you ask, here is your answer (which is low salary). Regardless, the defining moment of the film occurs when Donya responds to a sarcastic message smuggled into the cake. We have information that he is not. But we are still in shock.
The script (co-written by Jalali) is astute in exploring how refugees are seen as saints or sinners. When told that Afghans "look like humble and beautiful people," Donya replied, "Yes, but I'm not a good example."
With her thick cheekbones and cold, grateful eyes, Zada often resembles a young Scarlett Johansson. As a former journalist and refugee, he has never acted in his life, so it makes you wonder why people spend money on acting school. His laid-back demeanor is wonderful, most evident in his scenes with Jeremy Allen White (Daniel, a James Dean-type mechanical bully).
Star of TV melodrama The Bear, White was hailed as a sex god. We agree that the 32-year-old doesn't look intimidating at all, and her simple yet classy performance in Fremont was something truly special.
Many of the "supporting" characters also prove to be memorable. For example, Gregg Turkington introduces us to the temperamental psychiatrist Dr. Anthony (the latter responding to an innocuous paragraph from Jack London's White Tooth that seemed both poignant and hysterically funny).
Fremont (shot in black and white) is as beautiful as a Jim Jarmusch photograph. I've seen it all before, but it's better to be wrong.
“Fremont” will be in theaters on September 15
