Fremont is a city in California, with a population of around 230,000 people. It's also a film. That film is about one particular resident of Fremont, Donya, a migrant from Afghanistan, living in a motel with a community of other Afghan migrants. She is a former translator for the US military and now works as a fortune cookie writer in San Francisco. She is awaiting therapy, so she can be prescribed some sleeping pills to stop her racing mind at night. Instead of a quick prescription, she gets some “real” therapy and is desperately therapised by Dr Anthony, who fights to bring out her trauma by relating to her job and life.
Donya breaks the first rule of screenwriting, “make your main character love to chat”. Although, all rules are made to be broken, much like a Piñata. She stoically stares her way through this film, allowing those around her to fill in the gaps when she doesn’t want to speak. For me, this worked in parts and made it slightly difficult to connect to in others. I think my main issue with this film was that it didn’t have a wholly consistent level to it, making it harder to feel what I was supposed to.
Donya works quietly in a hand-made fortune cookie factory, where she is promoted to writer after an untimely death of a very old colleague. She takes this head on and types her heart out, with the vague and mostly impossible guidelines set by her employer. Her job feels a little bit like a haven throughout the film, as she doesn’t really face much of her real life, travelling to San Francisco to be away from Fremont. She chooses to work around Chinese and American people instead. This separation is felt in the times we spend with her. Once we return to her home or to the therapist's office, she is confronted with a lot of feelings from her past, often stemming from the guilt she feels having worked for the US government while they were at war with Afghanistan, or the thoughts of the people she left behind, still struggling.
She speaks about this with one of the others living in her motel building. She expresses guilt that she might long for something beautiful while they are living day by day, hoping for survival.
Her story changes when she faces this loneliness and puts her number in a cookie, to try and chase a dream, hoping for fate to take the reins.
The film has a deadpan humour throughout it, not something that you’re always going to laugh out loud at, but Donya’s awareness does point out the strange social situations she might be in. Most of these moments come from her boss or Dr Anthony, who I don’t think is a very good therapist, he’d be a great teacher though, those ones who just cover when other teachers are sick and don’t really seem to know anything. This humour is also balanced with quiet loneliness, feelings of being lost and without a true purpose. The film balances these well, not creating a stark tonal shift between the humour and drama.
Scenes are slow, having a handful of cuts per scene, allowing us to watch the action without much disruption. While the composition and greyscale look made for some really beautiful photography, some of those scenes didn’t work for me, lingering a little too long on an action or conversation. The quietness in these moments made it so I felt like I was just watching, and not necessarily gaining much from the scene playing out in front of me.
As I said, the camera work was really effective, opting for a lot of symmetry in its composition, and its tighter aspect ratio boxed in the world, strengthening that look. I don’t think there has to be a reason for either the aspect ratio or black and white other than that it looks good, and I felt like that was the case in this, justifying its inclusion most times we cut to a new shot.
The music took some sharp turns in this film, beginning with loud brass, overpowering what was on screen, while complementing the slow pace with its liveliness, bringing that all important balance we all look for. In moments of brief tension, the music is edited in reverse and chops up, having sudden strikes of chords that sound like a jazz band falling down a flight of stairs. I liked it.
Later on, we get some peaceful and plucky guitars, selling the later emotion that the film brings in for the closing moments.
While I’ve made the point of not connecting to the whole film, I was locked in for the ending, as it sparked some life into the story that I felt like I was looking for the entire time.
I think this could have been high up on my list for the year if I felt what I felt in the ending for the entire runtime. The slow pace often works for me in these types of films, letting me escape into another world for a segment of time, experiencing experiences outside of my own. I may connect to it more on a second watch, knowing the context and what to expect but for now, I sit in appreciation and finale emotions.
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