They shouldn't be too original, they shouldn't be too obvious

Continuing my trip up The Guardian's top 50 films of 2023

#26 :  Fremont

There are hints of early Jim Jarmusch in Babak Jalali’s dreamy fourth feature about a fortune cookie writer looking for love, with fine supporting turns from The Bear’s Jeremy Allen White and Gregg Turkington.

"Early Jim Jarmusch" and "a fortune cookie writer" are not phrases that get me excited about a film, I'm afraid. I also have no idea who Gregg Turkington is...

Hmmm. The first thing we have to talk about here is the overall style because we have a weird aspect ratio (4:3), mix of languages, unusual camera angles, use of black and white (with high contrast) and static cameras - it's safe to say it's pretty damn arty. The static camera thing is interesting because I found myself hypnotised watching the film waiting for some camera movement - I only noticed it in a couple of shots, one of which I think was supposed to be a dream (but I wasn't entirely sure!). As well as the cameras being static, the characters are also often static in shot - sometimes with their back to us or their head out of the frame. Babak Jalali certainly knew the feel he was going for - some might find it a bit too much but I actually quite liked it.

So what about the plot? Hmm - what plot is that you're talking about exactly? Donya (Anaita Wali Zada) used to be a translator in Afghanistan and then came to the US where she now has a job making fortune cookies - which is quite a good place to start. And she's a bit lonely. And, well - that's pretty much it. We follow her interactions with various people in her life and it's fair to say they rarely amount to anything - and they often have no obvious relation to anything that comes before or after.

And yet, somehow, the whole bunch of nothingness somehow adds up to something - you get an overall feeling of isolation which you'd like to see resolved, but you're not sure whether any resolution is going to necessarily result in an improvement. And then, towards the end of the film we actually have a nuance of plot, which goes nowhere close to where you're expecting it to go, but pretty charmingly so nonetheless. And then the film pretty much just ends!

Anaita is surprisingly watchable as Donya, particularly since she rarely gives us any facial expressions or vocal inflections to work with - she's the still centre of a pretty still film. Among those she comes into contact with Hilda Schmelling is charmingly encouraging as her friend Joanna, Eddie Tang is nicely supportive as her boss Ricky, Gregg Turkington (whoever he is) is quirkily amusing as her doctor/therapist (who seems to have a load more problems than Donya does) and Jeremy Allen White is distractingly cute as whoever-he-might-turn-out-to-be.

You'd certainly have to be in the mood for some indie-arthouse quirk to watch this, but as the film progressed I found myself being converted by its charms and I'm glad I stuck with it to the end - I was also surprisingly pleased with an ending that I'd have rejected as too open-ended in plenty of other films. I'd struggle to whole-heartedly recommend it because I suspect the majority of people would have no time for its nonsense but The Guardian has offered up far worse options (and I'm sure there are still plenty more to come). Somewhat surprisingly, as I write this it's available to stream on Channel 4 and Amazon Prime or to rent in all the usual places (but why would you rent it if it's on Channel 4?) - if you fancy a bit of quirk then maybe this is for you.

#27 - Perfectly fine
#25 - I wasn't expecting quite so much dancing in a dance film