Friday, July 17, 2020

Sweetness in the Belly (2020)

While the title has nearly nothing to do with the film, it was good nevertheless, white washed, but good anyway.
Sure, it is completely bizarre that non-religious British parents are going to abandon their daughter at a Sufi mosque in Morocco, but you kind of just have to go with it.
Now, Lilly (a surprisingly good Dakota Fanning) is an adult, and has fled the battle-torn Ethiopia for Britain, where she has special status due to the color of her skin, though she is too naive to realize that. But she's one of the first to be given an apartment, though she isn't lonely for long, opening it up to a new mother, Amina (Wunmi Mosaku), her newborn and young son. Amina's husband was beaten and jailed and she was raped at a refugee camp, so her pain is not the same as Lilly's. Lilly was also separated from her doctor lover Aziz (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) who fought for the resistance against the military. Needless to say, only one of them has a happy ending, though there is promise for the other.
While Lilly's character is a bit unrealistic, Fanning finally shows the promise of becoming a great actress, not to mention the rest of the cast is pitch perfect as well, and the screenplay is tight, in what is hopefully a good translation from the printed page. It shows how resilent people can be which is never something that can be overlooked. Grade: B+
Side Notes:
-Big Bang Theory's Kunal Nayyar is decent in his small role as a British doctor. Lilly really likes her doctors.
-Lilly is also very eager to change bedpans.
-The side project that Amina and Lilly start of reuniting refugees with their families unfortunately gets stuck on the back burner and is merely an afterthought, when it should have been the focal point of the plot.

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